Spanish High Court fines Luis Rubiales for kissing Jennifer Hermoso but acquits on coercion charges

The Spanish National High Court has sentenced Luis Rubiales, former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), for the unsolicited kiss on Jennifer Hermoso after the final of the 2023 World Cup. Judge José Manuel Clemente Fernández-Prieto, head of the Central Criminal Court, imposed a fine of €10,800 ($11,288) for a crime of sexual assault, but acquitted Rubiales of allegedly coercing the player after the incident to publicly justify his actions. The prosecution had sought two and a half years in prison for the former RFEF president. The ruling also prohibits Rubiales from approaching Hermoso within a radius of 200 meters and from communicating with her for a year, as well as obliging him to compensate the victim with €3,000 and to cover 50% of the costs of the judicial process, “excluding those caused by the class action” brought by the Spanish Footballers’ Association.

Judge Fernández-Prieto summarized his decision as follows: “It has been duly proven and is thus declared that on August 20, 2023, in Sydney, State of New South Wales, Australia, on the occasion of the presentation of medals to the players of the Spanish women’s national soccer team after their victory in the World Cup final, and at the moment when the player Jennifer Hermoso was receiving the formal greeting and congratulations from the defendant Luis Manuel Rubiales, the latter held the player’s head with both hands, and surprisingly and without the player’s consent or acceptance, gave her a kiss on the lips.”

The court also acquitted the other three defendants facing charges of coercion: Albert Luque, former director of the men’s national team; Jorge Vilda, former coach of the women’s national team; and Rubén Rivera, former head of marketing for the RFEF. The Public Prosecutor’s Office had sought terms of 18 months in prison for participating in the alleged coercion against the player.

The magistrate opted for a fine “in view of the nature of the aggression [...] being a sporadic act of the accused” and “not requiring a special rehabilitation of the crime.” At the same time, the judge was forceful in ruling that there was proof of a sexual offense: “This action of kissing a woman on the mouth has a clear sexual connotation, and it is not the normal way to greet people with whom one does not have an affective relationship.” During the trial, Hermoso assured that she did not give her consent for the former RFEF president to kiss her during the medal ceremony on August 20 in Sydney, where the World Cup final was held. She also affirmed that she did not hear Rubiales ask “can I give you a little kiss?” as he had claimed, despite the fact that days after the incident she affirmed that, according to Rubiales, what he had said to her was “a peck?”.

Faced with the player’s version of events, now confirmed by the High Court (“this judge attributes full credibility to Hermoso,” the judge stated), Rubiales defended the opposite during his hearing. His lawyer, the prestigious criminal attorney Olga Tubau, argued that the footballer did not consider the kiss a sexual aggression, and gave as an example her subsequent behavior, i.e. Hermoso’s participation in the celebrations to mark the first World Cup won by the women’s national team. The assistant prosecutor who handled the case, Marta Durántez, tried to discredit this line of defense during the hearings: “What can we demand that she do? That she go to a corner to cry?” she asked.

In the same line, Fernández-Prieto pointed out that the absence of consent does not imply that the athlete could not feel enormous “joy” for the great success achieved, which she would have wanted to “celebrate at all costs.” “It cannot be ignored that the sexual aggression of which the woman is the object has the intensity that it has,” contextualized the judge, who downplayed the value of the expert report presented by the defense, in which a deaf person assured that, as seen in a TikTok video, Rubiales had asked Hermoso if he could give her a “little kiss.” The ruling emphasizes that “the composition does not prove anything in relation to consent, since it is unknown what the woman, who has her back to the camera, could have said in response.” And it adds: “It has not been explained in a minimally convincing way by the accused during trial why the kiss was given to Jenny on her mouth and not on her cheeks, as was the case with the rest of the championship-winning players.”

After being banned by FIFA on August 26, 2023, Rubiales eventually resigned as RFEF president on September 10, 21 days after the kiss and amid strong public and political pressure to step aside.

Support for the players’ version of events

The court showed clear support for the player’s account and her teammates in the locker room. The magistrate considered it proven that, after Hermoso had left the stage where the medal ceremony was held, she communicated “her displeasure” over the kiss to her brother, friends, and teammates and that, due to the unfolding scandal, the RFEF concocted a series of schemes for the victim to publicly justify Rubiales’ actions. In this sense, for example, the judge stated that Vilda approached the player’s brother on the plane back to Spain and told him that, “if the situation became more complicated, heads would roll and things would not go well for [Hermoso] or for anyone else.” These maneuvers continued in Ibiza, where the team traveled to celebrate the title, on the part of Luque and Rivera.

Despite considering all this to be proven, Fernández-Prieto concluded that there was no act of “violence” or “intimidation” that could be considered a crime, as required by legislation and jurisprudence. The sentence can be appealed before the Criminal Chamber of the National High Court. The Prosecutor’s Office, which requested a prison sentence for all the defendants, will decide whether to file such a motion after studying the resolution in depth, according to sources from the constitutional body. Sources from Rubiales’ defense team confirmed that they will appeal.

During the two weeks of the trial, several national team players — Misa Rodríguez, Irene Paredes, Alexia Putellas, and Laia Codina — Hermoso’s brother, and two friends, described a series of maneuvers by the RFEF hierarchy to make the player publicly defend Rubiales’ image, damaged not only by the kiss, but also by his subsequent behavior — he called those who had been outraged by his actions “losers” and “dumbasses” on Spanish radio — and previously, when he grabbed his crotch in the VIP box at the Olympic Stadium in Sydney in the presence of Queen Letizia, Princess Sofía, and the president of FIFA, Gianni Infantino.

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