Spanish ex-soccer boss Rubiales sentenced to pay fine over kiss without consent

By Emma Pinedo

MADRID (Reuters) -Spain's High Court has found former soccer federation head Luis Rubiales guilty of sexual assault for kissing player Jenni Hermoso without her consent and fined him over 10,000 euros ($10,434) in a case which caused a nationwide furore.

It acquitted him of a charge of coercion, the court said on Thursday in a ruling seen by Reuters. Rubiales told Reuters he would appeal, saying: "I am going to keep fighting."

Prosecutors had sought a prison sentence for Rubiales, 47, over the incident that provoked a heated debate in Spain about sexism in women's football and wider Spanish society and gave momentum to a "Me Too" movement in the country.

The court said it had also acquitted Rubiales' three co-defendants who were accused of attempting to coerce Hermoso into saying the kiss, at the 2023 World Cup awards ceremony in Sydney, was consensual. The ensuing scandal overshadowed Spain's victory in the tournament.

Rubiales, who is the target of a separate corruption investigation into commissions paid over a lucrative deal to stage the Spanish Super Cup competition in Saudi Arabia, has maintained throughout this month's trial that Hermoso had consented to be kissed amid the celebrations.

But Judge Jose Manuel Fernandez-Prieto said he believed Hermoso's testimony that she had not.

He found Rubiales guilty of sexual assault. But he said that while this was "always reproachable", this instance was of minor intensity as there was no violence or intimidation.

As it involved a kiss rather than a more serious action, Rubiales should be spared time in prison, Fernandez-Prieto said.

"The pecuniary penalty must be chosen, which is less serious than the custodial sentence," he said in his ruling.

The ruling also banned Rubiales from going within a 200-m (218 yards) radius of Hermoso and from communicating with her for one year. He will also have to pay Hermoso 3,000 euros as compensation. The fine was set at 20 euros a day over an 18-month period.

Rubiales' gross annual salary at the RFEF federation was 675,762 euros.

During the trial, Hermoso said the unsolicited kiss and the commotion that followed "tainted one of the happiest days of my life", while her teammates testified it left her overwhelmed, crying and exhausted in the following hours and days.

The captain of Spain's women's team said she respected the court's decision but that she was surprised there was no conviction regarding the charges of coercion.

"I think the conviction for sexual assault is correct. What I find somehow striking and strange is that there is no conviction for coercion," Irene Paredes said at a press briefing ahead of a game of the national team on Friday.

Paredes, who testified during the trial, said her opinion of the ruling reflected the reaction of the players in the locker room after training on Thursday.

The overall sense of the verdict, if not the mild sentence, was hailed as a victory for women's rights in a country where macho attitudes are still deeply ingrained in some sectors of society despite considerable progress in recent decades.

"When there is no consent there is assault and that is what the judge certifies in this sentence. The victim's word is honoured, as the law stipulates, and should not be questioned," Equality Minister Ana Redondo in the leftist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X.

Prominent feminist politician Irene Montero, a member of the European Parliament, also said the ruling was a victory for the movement, although she lamented the "minimum fine and damages".

"Not long ago, it was unthinkable that a court would recognise a kiss without consent as a sexual assault. Feminism is changing everything: Only 'yes' means 'yes'," she said.

The ruling can be appealed.

Hermoso's lawyer told Reuters it was up to his client to decide if "she wants to keep up the fight".

The Association of Spanish Footballers (AFE), which was a private prosecutor in the case, said the ruling was "a significant step forward in the defence of women's rights and in the fight for a sport free of abuse and inequality."

($1 = 0.9584 euros)

(Reporting by Emma Pinedo, additional reporting by Fernando Kallas and Joan Faus, writing by Andrei Khalip, Editing by Aislinn Laing and Angus MacSwan and Sandra Maler)