Spain: Luis Rubiales guilty in a kiss affair spoken

In connection with the kiss affair in Spanish football, the former leader of the association Luis Rubiales has been sentenced to a penalty. The forced kiss on the mouth of world champion Jenni Hermoso 2023 was a sexual assault, which was punished with a penalty of 10,800 euros, the responsible Spanish court decided on Thursday. Rubiales and his three co -accused were acquitted of the accusation of coercion.

At the award ceremony after the women’s World Cup finals in 2023, Rubiales had grabbed the player’s head with both hands in front of running television cameras and kissed them roughly on the mouth. The footballer says this was done against her will. The scene, which was transferred worldwide on television, triggered outrage, and critics considered them as abuse of power.

Rubiales had refused to step down for weeks and presented the incident as a harmless “kiss among celebrating friends”, Hermoso, on the other hand, as “sexist and inappropriate action”. Since a reform of Spanish criminal law, a non -mutually acceptable kiss has been a sexual assault. The public prosecutor also complained about coercion because they were said to have pushed the player to join the representative kiss.

In the trial in San Fernando de Henares near Madrid, the 47-year-old ruby ​​and the 34-year-old Hermoso both remained in her presentation. The public prosecutor demanded two and a half years in prison for rubyers, his defense an acquittal. The lawyer Olga Tabau Martínez said in her plea that ruby ​​behavior was “inappropriate”, but could not complain about it. The prosecutor Marta Durántz Gil, on the other hand, said there was “no doubt” that the kiss was “not mutually acceptable”.

The case had made Hermoso, which is now playing in Mexico, a symbolic figure in the fight against sexism in sport. Under the hashtag #Seacabó (it is enough), the Spanish footballers in the online networks asked women to denounce macho violence and injustice.