Justice has stepped in. A Barcelona court has opened a case to investigate how the mother of Dani Alves disseminated images and the identity of the Brazilian footballer’s victim. Alves, sentenced to four and a half years in prison for the sexual assault of a 23-year-old woman at Sutton nightclub in the early hours of December 31, 2022, has been the subject of this new inquiry, as reported by El Periódico de Cataluña, part of the same publishing group. The woman told the Mossos d’Esquadra that Lucia Alves posted old videos of herself dancing with a friend on her Instagram account, detailing the victim’s full name. The materials were drawn from social networks and had been edited. Several Spanish outlets later reproduced the content.
The police forwarded the report containing the woman’s complaint to the Barcelona guard court and, following a distribution system, the matter landed in Instrucción Court No. 21 of Barcelona. That court has now initiated diligencias to examine the publication of the images. Since the complaint was filed in early January, several days passed while the judge asked the public prosecutor about the territorial competence of Barcelona courts to start the probes, given that the materials circulated via the Alves family’s Instagram account in Brazil. The prosecutor’s office supported routing the case through the capital because the protected legal interest, namely the victim and complainant, resides in Spain. A few days before the trial in Barcelona against Alves for the sexual assault, Lucia Alves deleted the videos. Yet the impact had already occurred, with weeks of online circulation.
Public information indicates that the videos appeared on Lucia Alves’s Instagram account on December 30, marking one year since the assault at Sutton. The footage shows the victim dancing with friends, perhaps celebrating a birthday, or even including older footage of a conversation with a cousin. Days later, as Brazilian and Spanish media picked up the story and re-shared it, the young woman filed a complaint with the Mossos after her identity had been exposed by the early investigative court that had expressly forbidden such disclosure. The mother of Alves and the outlets that embedded or published the clips now face potential criminal action for revealing secrets, violating the victim’s moral integrity, and obstructing justice, on grounds that the release of information could be seen as pressure on the complainant ahead of the trial of the former Barcelona player.
The victim’s attorney, Ester García, stated after filing the complaint that “the dissemination of images or any information that identifies a victim of sexual violence constitutes an outright crime.” She warned that actions would be pursued against anyone or any media that spread the images or facilitated any information, direct or indirect, that could reveal the victim’s identity. “It is regrettable that, to this day, there are attempts to destroy people who come forward with accusations,” the attorney concluded. The judicial investigation is underway and continuing.