Cristiano Ronaldo has 'firmly' denied the rape allegations being made against him - and says he refuses to 'feed the media spectacle'

Reuters

Cristiano Ronaldo.

• Cristiano Ronaldo has denied rape allegations made against him by 34-year-old Kathryn Mayorga.
• The Juventus FC soccer player issued a statement in two tweets on Wednesday after Mayorga told German publication Der Spiegel that Ronaldo raped her in Las Vegas in 2009.
• Ronaldo said: "I firmly deny the accusations."
• He added that he is keen to clear his name but refuses "to feed the media spectacle."

Cristiano Ronaldo has issued a statement on Twitter in which he "firmly" denies an accusation of rape.

The allegation relates to a reported incident at a Las Vegas penthouse in 2009, the same summer Ronaldo left Manchester United for Real Madrid in what was a world-record soccer transfer at the time.

Kathryn Mayorga, a 34-year-old American woman, told German publication Der Speigel that Ronaldo raped her without a condom in the Hotel Palms Place penthouse after the couple met at the resort's Rain nightclub.

The story broke in Germany last week, but the news quickly circulated around the world - and Ronaldo issued a statement on Twitter to address the claim on Wednesday.

"I firmly deny the accusations being issued against me," he said, "Rape is an abominable crime that goes against everything that I am and believe in. Keen as I may be to clear my name, I refuse to feed the media spectacle created by people seeking to promote themselves at my expense."

In a second tweet, he added: "My clear conscious will thereby allow me to await with tranquillity the results of any and all investigations."

The tweets follow a statement issued by Ronaldo's lawyer, Christian Schertz, on September 28 which read: "The reporting in Spiegel is blatantly illegal. It violates the personal rights of our client Cristiano Ronaldo in an exceptionally serious way.

"This is an inadmissible reporting of suspicions in the area of privacy. It would therefore already be unlawful to reproduce this reporting. We have been instructed to immediately assert all existing claims under press law against Spiegel, in particular compensation for moral damages in an amount corresponding to the gravity of the infringement, which is probably one of the most serious violations of personal rights in recent years."

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that Ronaldo was being sued by a woman in Nevada who accused him of raping her in 2009 and hiring a team of "fixers" to "obstruct the criminal investigation and trick her into keeping quiet."

Las Vegas police also confirmed to the AP on Monday that a sexual assault case from 2009 brought by the woman named in the lawsuit had been reopened.

Ronaldo, one of the world's most valuable soccer players who represents Juventus FC, had previously dismissed the accusation on an Instagram live video as "fake news."

But the news was enough to "dishearten" Save the Children, a charity Ronaldo has been associated with since 2016.

"We are disheartened by the news report we've seen in the last 24 hours and are working to get more information," a spokesperson told The Independent.

Business Insider has reached out to Ronaldo's key sponsors - Nike, Herbalife, and Abbot Lab - for comment.