Cuban woman claims Maradona raped her as teenager

TIL Desk Sports/ Mavys Alvarez, a Cuban woman who had a relationship with late soccer star Diego Maradona two decades ago, told a news conference on Monday that the Argentine player had raped her when she was a teenager and “stolen her childhood.”

Alvarez, now 37, gave testimony last week to an Argentine Ministry of Justice court that is investigating her allegations of trafficking against Maradona’s former entourage, linked to events when she was 16. Maradona, widely considered one of the greatest ever soccer stars, died a year ago on November 25, 2020.

The complaint relates to a journey Alvarez took to Argentina with Maradona in 2001, when he was around 40 and she was 16. Alvarez said that she first met the soccer star shortly before the trip, when he was in Cuba to undergo drug addiction treatment.

At a news conference in Buenos Aires, Alvarez said Maradona had raped her in the clinic in Havana where he was staying, while her mother was in the next room. “He covers my mouth, he rapes me, I don’t want to think about it too much,” Alvarez said. “I stopped being a girl, all my innocence was stolen from me. It’s hard. You stop living the innocent things that a girl of that age has to experience.”