A Cuban woman who had a relationship with the late Diego Maradona two decades ago said at a news conference on Monday that the Argentine player raped her when she was a teenager.
Mavys Alvarez, 37, gave testimony last week before a court of the Argentine Ministry of Justice, which is investigating human trafficking allegations against Maradona’s former entourage in connection with the events when she is 16 years old.
Maradona, considered one of the greatest football stars, died on November 25, 2020.
The complaint relates to Alvarez’s trip to Argentina with Maradona in 2001, when he was about 40 years old and she was 16. Alvarez says she first met the soccer star just before the trip, when he was is in Cuba receiving treatment for a drug addiction.
At a press conference in Buenos Aires, Alvarez said Maradona raped her in the clinic in Havana, where he was staying, while her mother was in the next room.
“He gagged me, he raped me, I don’t want to think about it too much,” Alvarez said.
“I stopped being a girl, all my virginity was taken away by you. It was hard. I stopped living the innocent things that a girl of that age has to go through.”
Matias Morla, Maradona’s lawyer before his death, did not respond to a request for comment. Reuters was unable to identify other legal representatives of Maradona in the case.
Alvarez has previously described the relationship in media interviews as consensual, but also said that Maradona raped her at least once.
She said that her family only allowed a relationship with the star, despite the large age gap, because of Maradona’s friendship with the late Cuban President Fidel Castro.
“My family would never have accepted it if the Cuban government hadn’t stepped in,” she said. “In other words, they are forced to accept a relationship that is not good for them, or for anyone else.”
The Cuban government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Alvarez said she filed the complaint “to help all women, all victims of the crime of human trafficking,” she said. “To be able to help them in any way I can. That’s my idea.”
She said it was difficult to return to Argentina, where Maradona is still a hero to many.
“It’s hard to be in his country, to see him everywhere, he’s an idol and at the same time everything I remember about him as a human being feels ugly,” she said.
