Cape Verde’s soccer team captain accused of raping translator before star World Cup run
The captain of World Cup fairytale story, Cape Verde, has been accused of rape by a team translator after he allegedly entered her hotel room and choked her, according to reports.
Ryan Mendes, 36, who has played in all three of the African island country’s World Cup games so far, was accused of sexually assaulting a Brazilian woman hired to be the team’s translator during a trip to New Zealand to play a game in March, reported Brazil’s Globo news outlet.
The unidentified woman said she approached at least three officials from the Cape Verdean soccer authorities who did not respond, according to Brazilian media.
The case is now being investigated by New Zealand police, who collected security camera footage from an Auckland hotel and are awaiting the results of a forensic investigation before they decide whether to charge Mendes.
The alleged sex assault was reported by New Zealand media last month, but the name of the player was not revealed — only that he was on Cape Verde’s team.
In her statement, the woman said she was hired by Cape Verde’s soccer team for their games in the FIFA Series in New Zealand, and after the first match against Chile, she was invited to a meeting in one of the hotel rooms reserved for the national side at the hotel.
But when she realized that she wasn’t needed for translating, and this was a social gathering, she said she returned to her room, and shortly after heard knocking on the door.
When she opened it, Mendes allegedly forced his way into her room, throttled, punched, and bit her, before raping her, according to her statement to New Zealand police.
She shared pictures of injuries to her mouth, neck, leg, and side, which were handed to the police.
Mendes, whose Cape Verde team made history by becoming the smallest nation to reach the World Cup knockout rounds, has not responded yet to the allegations.
Soccer’s governing body FIFA issued a statement hours after the allegations were first reported on Sunday.
The organization said it is in contact with New Zealand authorities and takes any misconduct allegations “extremely seriously,” according to Brazil’s media.
However, it said it could not comment on the allegations or confirm whether any investigations are underway.
Cape Verde just lost in the knock-out round to Argentina.
Gary Glitter Charged With New Child Sex Abuse Allegations Dating Back to the Late 1970s
Paul Gadd, the 82-year-old former glam-rock star known to the world as Gary Glitter, is facing a fresh round of criminal charges tied to allegations of child sexual abuse, London's Metropolitan Police confirmed this week. Gadd, who is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence stemming from a previous conviction, now stands accused of one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a girl under the age of 13, along with three separate counts of indecent assault against a girl under 14.
According to police, the alleged offenses involve a single woman and are said to have occurred sometime between 1978 and 1981, a period that fell squarely within Gadd's commercial peak, when hits like "Rock and Roll (Part Two)" made him a fixture of British pop culture. The accuser first brought her allegations to authorities in January of last year, and investigators formally interviewed Gadd about the claims in July. Officers trained to work with victims of sexual abuse have been assigned to support the woman throughout the proceedings, police said.
Gadd is scheduled to appear before Westminster Magistrates' Court on August 5, where the charges will be formally presented. In announcing the case, Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor Bethan David said that prosecutors had reviewed the evidence and determined both that it met the threshold required to proceed and that pursuing the case served the public interest.
This is far from the first time Gadd has faced prosecution for crimes against children. In 2015, he was convicted on multiple counts of sexually abusing three separate schoolgirls, with offenses dating from 1975 to 1980, roughly overlapping with the timeframe now at issue in the newly filed charges. That conviction led to his imprisonment, though he was briefly released on probation in 2023.
Gadd's record of legal trouble tied to child exploitation stretches back even further. In 1999, he was jailed in the United Kingdom after being found in possession of child pornography. Following that conviction, he relocated to Cambodia, where he lived for several years before being deported in 2002 amid suspicions of sexual offenses against children in the country. He later resurfaced in Vietnam, where a court there sentenced him to four years in prison after finding him guilty of committing obscene acts against two young girls, aged 10 and 11 at the time.
Glitter's music has had an unusual afterlife despite his criminal history, continuing to surface in mainstream culture even as his personal reputation collapsed. "Rock and Roll (Part Two)" notably played a memorable role in the 2019 film Joker, and the track has remained a staple at sporting events for decades, often blared through stadium speakers during moments of celebration, a persistence that has periodically reignited public debate over separating a song from its creator's crimes.
Despite this extensive history of convictions and allegations spanning more than two decades and multiple countries, Gadd has consistently maintained that he holds no sexual interest in children, denying wrongdoing even in the face of repeated legal findings against him.
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