The Judge Francisco de Jorge Sends Rubiales, Luque, Vilda and Rivera To Trial For The Kiss And Subsequent Coercion

After five months of investigation and interrogations. The judge of the National Court Francisco de Jorge proposed this Thursday to put the former president of the Spanish Football Federation (FEF) Luis Rubiales on the bench for the non-consensual kiss of the national team player Jennifer Hermoso after the final of the last Women’s World Cup. disputed on August 20 in Sydney.

The judge – who concludes the investigation considering that he has already exhausted all avenues to find out the details of what happened both that night in the Australian capital and in the hours and days that followed – also proposes trying Rubiales, along with the sports director of the men’s team, Albert Luque, the former coach of the women’s team Jorge Vilda and the former marketing manager of the Federation Rubén Rivera for the pressure and coercion that the four allegedly subjected the player to publicly affirm that the kiss had been mutual. agreement and that at no time had she felt attacked.

In the order to move to an abbreviated procedure, in which the investigation is concluded considering that all the pertinent procedures have been carried out, the judge decides that the kiss to the player “was not consensual and was a unilateral and surprising initiative.” of the investigated Luis Rubiales.

De Jorge refuses to make a detailed qualification or specify the specific criminal offenses of which the four defendants are accused, since the investigation has confirmed that the events that occurred in Australia fall within the abbreviated procedure. In this case, he indicates that the kiss on the lips “affects the sphere of intimacy reserved for sexual relations, particularly in the context of two adults”, which is one of the assumptions that fit into this type of procedures.

The judge specifies that in this phase of investigation he should not conclude whether there was an “erotic purpose or not” behind the kiss or whether it was all the result of the “state of euphoria and agitation experienced as a consequence of the extraordinary sporting triumph”, as always. the former president of the federation has maintained. “These – he argues – are elements whose consequence and legal consequences must be assessed in the oral trial before the body in charge of prosecution,” points out the judge of the Génova Street court.

The instructor explains that at this procedural moment his function is limited to appreciating that there is sufficient evidence of the commission of the events narrated in his record and that these events are criminally relevant, making an accusation perfectly sustainable.

On the issue of coercion of the player, for the judge there is no doubt that the investigation has proven that there was a “concerted action” between Rubiales and the other three defendants “to break the will of Jennifer Hermoso Fuentes and get her to access record a video in which he said that the kiss had been consensual. These facts, according to the judge, could constitute a criminal offense related to the main crime indirectly attributed to Luis Rubiales, “even regardless of whether it could, eventually, have the nature of a minor crime, something that is not prejudged in this order.”