Jenni Hermoso to appeal decision acquitting Spain’s ex-soccer chief of coercion

There are still judicial chapters ahead in the Rubiales case. The former president of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), who on Thursday was convicted by the Spanish National High Court for a crime of sexual assault over the non-consensual kiss he gave to national team player Jenni Hermoso in Sydney after the 2023 World Cup final, has already confirmed that he will appeal the ruling, which also acquitted him of the crime of coercion. His lawyer, the prestigious criminal attorney Olga Tubau, will file an appeal before the Criminal Division of the same tribunal. Tubau has a period of 10 days from the handing down of the sentence, that is to say, from February 20, to do so.

The same step will also be taken by the lawyers representing Hermoso, and by the private prosecution exercised by the Association of Spanish Footballers (AFE), the union that represents soccer players in Spain, as confirmed by sources involved in the lawsuits. The public prosecutors, who had sought two and a half years in prison for Rubiales for the two crimes, are studying the text in depth to decide whether to appeal or not, according to sources from the Public Prosecutor’s Office.

Tubau had asked for the acquittal of her client on both charges. Rubiales was cleared of the crime of coercion, of which he stood accused for allegedly instigating a series of maneuvers to force Hermoso to publicly defend his actions at the World Cup final. Judge José Manuel Clemente Fernández-Prieto, chief magistrate of the Central Criminal Division of the High Court, considered it proven in his ruling that the RFEF hierarchy devised a series of stratagems 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 had previously 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.

The judge concluded, however, that there was no act of “violence” or “intimidation” that could be considered a crime, as required by legislation and jurisprudence. The defense parties believe that there was a sufficient level of intimidation and pressure from the top of the federation towards Hermoso to classify these actions as a crime of coercion. During the two weeks of the trial, it was demonstrated that the leadership of the RFEF maneuvered to try to force the athlete to appear in public with Rubiales to play down the kiss, which she repeatedly refused to do. It also became clear that no one in the federation spoke to the player about the protocol against sexual violence that existed in the organization to denounce situations like the one she had been subjected to. Instead of activating this mechanism, the entity initiated a procedure within its own integrity unit that exonerated Rubiales by qualifying the kiss as a “trivial” and “anecdotal” issue, without even hearing Hermoso’s testimony.

Rubiales was found guilty of sexual assault. The ruling fined him €10,800 ($11,300) and prohibited 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. “[Rubiales] held the player’s head with both hands, and surprisingly and without the player’s consent or acceptance, he kissed her on the lips,” reads the sentence, which supports the athlete’s account, i.e., that there was no consent.

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 ruling was announced on Thursday, in the middle of the training camp of the women’s football team, which will begin its defense of the League of Nations against Belgium on Friday at the Ciutat de València stadium in Valencia, in eastern Spain. It will do so without Jenni Hermoso, who has been left out of Montse Tomé's list for the second consecutive time. Irene Paredes, the team captain, explained in a press conference: “What I can say is that I think the conviction for sexual assault is correct, but what I find striking or strange is that there is no conviction for coercion. This is the general feeling inside the dressing room.”

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