Alves’ defense works on its new strategy to prove the innocence of the Brazilian soccer player. The Court of Barcelona agreed to keep the former Barça player Dani Alves in preventive detention without bail, accused of having allegedly raped a young woman in a Barcelona nightclub on December 30. The magistrates concluded that the decision of the investigating judge to send the soccer player to prison was “justified and necessary” given the “reasonable evidence” of sexual assault against the player.
This confirmed a hard blow for the footballer who was already expected by his defense. Accused of sexual assault, Alves will remain imprisoned “until a trial date is set,” according to judicial sources, and his legal team is already preparing a new, much more aggressive strategy aimed at discrediting the arguments put forward by the victim, the investigation of the Mossos and the forensic reports made to the young woman at the Hospital Clinic.
The court explained that the DNA samples from the victim’s body in the bathroom match that of Alves and support the version that the Brazilian assaulted the young woman, therefore, demonstrating that the relationships were consensual is vital for the future of the player.
Consent on the part of the victim and “distorted narrative” are the two burning nails at which his legal team is grasping. And for this, it now focuses on forensic reports. If first, the lawyer assured that the young woman’s injuries did not correspond to a sexual assault, in recent days they have insisted that the analysis of the vaginal discharge would confirm consent.
In this sense, the lawyers argue that The victim’s “vaginal discharge” is “incompatible with forced intercourse.” They also point to “the lack of lesions in the vaginal cavity” of the young woman and the absence of other signs of “physical reduction.” Some arguments that do not coincide with the account of the witnesses who were that night in the club.
“Lubrication is not consent”
However, according to the different scientific and forensic investigations, this argument is not only denigrating for the victim but also ridiculous. Authorities often raise the possibility of female lubrication, and thus consent, as a genital area with no lesions (or with lesions not indicative of penetration) in a case where vaginal penetration has been documented by other means (for example, chemical examination or by testimonials). This particular belief is widespread among criminal lawyers and is argued in trials both by the defendant questioning the honesty of the victim.
To prove to what extent lubrication and even involuntary orgasms during a rape were frequentone of the UK’s leading experts on the physiology of sexuality, Roy Levin, published in 2004 the largest review of scientific literature on sexual arousal and orgasms in cases of forced or non-consensual stimulation. After reviewing medical examinations of sexually assaulted women, they found that indeed many lubricate, blood flow in the genitals increases, they acknowledge having experienced physical pleasure against their will, they moan with pleasure, and between 4-5 percent of the cases come to have a orgasm.
There is a belief that the fact that victims of sexual violence do not present wounds or tears that indicate a fight is normally related to the fact that there was consent. However, many times it has to do with physiological reactions of the body trying to survive the attack.
Laboratory studies also show that stress, fear, pain, or revulsion often decrease sexual response, but sometimes have the opposite effect: they increase blood flow to the genitals and therefore lubrication. In these cases, the stress of the rape would not prevent the genitals from reacting, but could even be a help triggered by a totally involuntary automatic reaction.
in the talk “Cultural impacts of sexual violence against women”, organized by the University of Mexico, the sexologist César Galicia argued that the body of the victims of sexual abuse can present reactions associated with arousal in the act. Such as lubrication and even an orgasm, without having received effective sexual stimulation. That is, without having enjoyed or consented to what happened.
“If a loved one tickles you, you laugh, but if a stranger tickles you walking down the street, there may be a reflex of laughter, but not because you are enjoying it or because you are having a good time,” he gave as an example of what What can happen to a victim of abuse?
The defense of the assaulted young woman considers that this maneuver by the soccer player’s defenders represents a “revictimization” of the victim.