Former Barcelona and Sevilla defender Dani Alves has been given a four and a half year prison sentence for sexual assault, as ruled a Barcelona Court this morning. Alves was on trial after being taken into custody in January of 2023, following an incident in a Barcelona nightclub on the 30th of December.
Alves maintained his innocence throughout, claiming in court that the sex was consensual, in contrast to the way the victim described non-consensual sex in the bathroom. The court did not accredit Alves’ version of events, but did hand out a sentence that was half of the nine years that the public prosecutor pursued, and less than half of the maximum 12-year sentence desired by the victim. The minimum sentence of sexual violence is four years.
The Brazilian will also be forced to pay the victim €150k in damages, and will then be subject to five years of parole, and has a restraining order from the victim for the next nine years and six months. The defence argued that Alves was intoxicated as a mitigating factor in the incident, and having already served a year of his sentence in custoday, he will be released in theory in July of 2028.
The case is still open for appeal, although it is not yet clear whether Alves will seek to reopen the case, as per MD.
