A judge has ordered the former FC Barcelona player Daniel Alves to testify again regarding alleged sexual assault at a Sutton nightclub in Barcelona. A young woman has been summoned to appear next Monday at the request of Alves’s defense lawyer, Cristóbal Martell. The Brazilian footballer is set to recount what occurred in the early hours of December 31 at the venue, with a first testimony on January 20 having yielded a troubled outcome for him.
During questioning, Alves faced contradictions, leading him to offer up to three different versions of events. The judge who oversaw the initial inquiry at the time was later removed from the case and imprisoned on grounds of risk of flight. The prison warrant, which supported Alves’s preventive detention, stated that there were
more than enough indications to suspect that a rape occurred at the disco and that the alleged author presented signs of suspicious behavior. The assessment was made before the instruction phase had progressed significantly.
Security camera footage from the nightclub shows Alves meeting the victim and friends in the venue’s VIP area. The actor is seen moving to a private bathroom after a brief chat, returning to the young woman after she asked, and they remained together for about 16 minutes. No record exists of what happened inside that private space. The woman testified that Alves closed the door and would not let her leave. She alleges she was slapped and assaulted during the encounter.
new tests
Court proceedings since January have included results that bolster the victim’s account, including a police report noting fingerprint evidence found in the club’s bathroom and video footage showing the young woman’s state captured shortly after the incident. The most telling material, however, comes from a semen analysis of intravaginal samples taken from the victim, which matched Alves’s DNA. In earlier statements Alves had not mentioned a prior acquaintance with the young woman, nor the sequence of events in the bathroom, nor the nature of her later consent. The defense has sought to explain these elements and challenge the interpretation of the evidence.
Alves has described moments in which he allegedly did not know the woman, then described entering the bathroom as she was inside, and later stated she consented to certain acts. The question now facing the court is how to reconcile these statements with the laboratory findings. As the case advances, observers will be watching what the defenses and prosecutors present in the coming hearings, and how the new testimony aligns with the growing body of evidence that the case has accumulated.