Overview of Incidents at Sutton Nightclub
Two surveillance cameras in the Sutton nightclub system captured a silhouette resembling football player Dani Alves near another person. A door and a bathroom area are visible in the footage. The claims regarding the alleged violation come from sources consulted by a regional newspaper. The images are not crystal clear, yet they may carry decisive weight for the ongoing assessment.
Support for Alves comes from his second attorney, Christopher Martell. It is stated that a 23-year-old woman went to the restroom while the football player remained in the living area. The footage shows two items, a white sneaker and a shirt matching the color of Alves, near a door frame. This suggests Alves was not in the bathroom when the woman entered the cabin, but he stayed in a nearby area where direct visual contact with the accuser could occur, aligning with the account provided by the complainant.
The young woman asserts that she did not enter the bathroom alone or while Alves was present. She told authorities at the police station and in court that she agreed to enter the private space and then the bathroom after Alves repeatedly urged her to follow. The publication has reconstructed the sequence with infographics before detailing the events.
before the rape
Just before four in the morning on December 30, Alves, a companion, and three teenagers are seen dancing at table 6 in the VIP area of Sutton nightclub in Barcelona. Three young women and their two friends participate. Alves had previously arranged for staff to invite the women to meet him and his companion in this reserved zone. The victims and their friend are seen dancing as the alleged events unfold and initial interactions occur.
At 03:42, Alves is inside a private area known as the Sutton suite. The suite is accessed through a door beside table 6 and leads to a narrow staircase to a glass-enclosed upper space where a sofa and table once stood. The glass partitions allow a view of the dance floor from inside the suite but not the other way around. Alves and the complainant do not ascend the stairs. Before reaching the stairs, after passing through the private room door, a small bathroom lies to the left, near the entrance of the alleged location of the incident.
In the appeal against Alves precautionary detention, decided on January 20, the Barcelona Court was expected to respond shortly. The defense argues that Alves entered through the toilet door on the left side of the image and did not reappear for about two minutes. The complainant, meanwhile, claims that she entered after meeting with two friends and a waiter and then proceeded to the door without Alves passing through. The available footage is said to speak for itself in this account.
The defense maintains that Alves was already inside the bathroom when the woman entered. The assertion is that the woman opened the private door herself and then the bathroom door.
Alves provided three different versions in response to the rape allegations. After feeling pressure from investigators, the most recent account was shared in court. The attorney and the judge who attended the bathroom, along with the accused, discussed the sequence, including the moment when the woman entered the space and the events that followed.
The account stands up against various factual markers, including fingerprint results from the police laboratory and the victim’s knee condition, though the documentation includes details from the investigation. The presence of Alves’s semen in the victim’s body was noted, and the two surveillance images are considered by some to contradict the account of the bathroom encounter.
The images show a white slipper next to the door frame and the entrance to the private suite. The color of the shoes and shirt worn by Alves that night matches those seen in the images, suggesting he was in the corridor near the private room when the young woman approached the area. The complainant testified that Alves pursued her in the days following the incident and drew her toward a space she had not initially intended to reach. She eventually agreed to accompany him through a door she did not recognize, and she entered the cabin with uncertainty about what lay ahead. The young woman indicated she wanted to leave once she learned the location was a bathroom, but Alves allegedly prevented her from leaving.
Later, the complainant reported that Alves mounted her while she remained on the toilet, leading to a struggle. She begged him to stop, but he did not relent. She alleged he restrained her, dragged her to the floor, grabbed her by the neck, and assaulted her, with additional acts described in the testimony. She claimed the assault continued until she exhausted the available strength.