Brazilians for the first time late Wednesday heard from the
woman who says that football superstar Neymar sexually assaulted her at a Paris
hotel.
Extracts of a televised interview with Najila Trindade
Mendes de Souza, the alleged victim, aired just one hour before Neymar was
about to enter the pitch for a friendly game between Brazil's national team and
Qatar in the capital Brasilia.
"It was aggression together with rape," said the
woman in an interview broadcast on the SBT network. The full interview is
scheduled to air on Monday.
Trindade, who says she works as a model, acknowledged that
she initially liked Neymar -- full name Neymar da Silva Santos Junior -- and
wanted to have sex with him.
The football megastar paid for a plane ticket to bring her
from Brazil and put her up in a Paris hotel.
Things changed dramatically at their first encounter,
Trindade said. "He was aggressive, totally different than the boy that I
got to know on the messages.
"Since I really wanted to be with him I said, OK, I'm
going to try to handle this," she said.
After some kissing and caressing "he started to hit me
... then he began to hurt me a lot, and I asked him to stop because it
hurt."
According to Trindade, Neymar apologized, but then
continued hurting her while they had sex.
Separately, the G1 news website reported that police have a
video that Trindade recorded of an alleged second encounter between the two.
The contents were not made public.
The athlete's mother Nadine Goncalves posted an emotional
message on Instagram on Tuesday urging her son to 'forgive that girl' and
'return to Jesus'.
Neymar, who insists on his innocence, published a video
stating that he was the victim of entrapment.
In the same video he also posted intimate WhatsApp messages
he said he had received from his accuser and photographs of her topless in a
bed.
One of the most colorful phrases of the exchange was 'Good
morning, object of my libido' - which has quickly become an online catchphrase
across Brazil.
However, the move only seemed to deepen Neymar's woes as
the police launched an investigation into the publication of intimate
information without the woman's permission. Such an offense carries a maximum
five-year jail term.
Neymar, who was transferred to Paris Saint-Germain from
Barcelona for a world-record 222 million euros ($248.5 million) in 2017, wrote
on Instagram that the evening's game would be the most difficult of his career
"due to the circumstances."
In the end he only lasted 20 minutes in the game, and
limped off the field aided by two members of the team's support staff with an
ice pack wrapped around his ankle.
Since the scandal exploded over the weekend the story has
dominated the news in Brazil, as fans fear that Neymar's troubles will affect
their team's performance in the upcoming Copa America -- South America's
continental championship, which Brazil is hosting and last won in 2007.
Brazil's national coach Tite said he had no plans to drop
the striker. "Neymar is a different kind of player that I'll want in the
team until the last moment because of his talent."
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