Spanish prosecutors opened an investigation of the nation’s soccer federation chief, officers mentioned Monday, in connection to his kiss on the lips of a participant shortly after profitable the World Cup.
The nationwide prosecutors additionally invited the participant, Spain’s crew captain Jennifer Hermoso, to succeed in out to them within the subsequent 15 days to report herself as a potential sufferer of sexual aggression by federation president Luis Rubiales, officers mentioned.
Girls and soccer followers throughout the globe have been shocked when Rubiales kissed Hermoso flush on the lips in the course of the medal ceremony following Spain’s thrilling, 1-0 victory over England, in Sydney per week in the past Sunday.
Hermoso has mentioned the kiss wasn’t consensual and that “I felt susceptible and a sufferer of an impulse-driven, sexist, out-of-place act with none consent on my half.”
In the meantime, additionally on Monday, Ángeles Béjar, Rubiales’s mom, went on a starvation strike to protest motion towards her son.
Béjar took refuge within the church of the Divina Pastora de Motril on the southern Spanish coast and defended her son. The mom mentioned her starvation strike will run “indefinitely, day and night time,” Spanish news agency EFE reported.
“My son doesn’t deserve what they’re doing to him,” she mentioned, including that he is the goal of an “inhuman and bloody hunt.”
The game’s worldwide governing physique, FIFA, on Saturday suspended Rubiales from all soccer actions for 90 days.
Rubiales has been defiant within the face of withering, worldwide criticism calling the kiss “spontaneous, mutual, euphoric and consensual.”
He is refused to resign.
His cousin, Vanessa Ruiz Béjar, advised reporters exterior the church that their household is struggling tremendously from this controversy.
“That she doesn’t need to depart the church, that his household, we, are struggling very a lot for him, that we don’t assume what’s occurring is simply,” she mentioned. “We need to be left in peace and that justice be accomplished, and that this lady tells the reality.”
The kiss has marred what had been joyous nationwide celebration of La Roja’s first time lifting the Girls’s World Cup trophy.
Spain joined an elite club of countries to have gained ladies’s soccer’s most coveted trophy, alongside the US, Germany, Japan and Norway.
However now the worldwide consideration on Spain has centered on its patriarchal tradition and the rising assist for Hermoso.
The phrase “Contigo, Jenni,” or “with you, Jenni,” has been used as a social media hashtag and handwritten on shirts, arms and even athletic tape of gamers the world over in current days.
