A woman has appeared on Brazilian TV to go public with accusations that she was raped by star footballer Neymar.
Najila Trindade told the SBT Brasil channel that the incident
in a Paris hotel on 15 May was "an assault together with rape".
Neymar
has denied the accusations, posting a WhatsApp message exchange to try to prove
his innocence.
He
appeared briefly to play for Brazil on Wednesday in a game he said was the most
difficult of his career.
Neymar
was injured after 20 minutes of the match against Qatar in Brasilia and
will miss the
upcoming 2019 Copa America tournament in Brazil with a ruptured ankle ligament.
Ms Trindade says she was attracted to the Paris St-Germain and
Brazil forward and wanted to have sex with him.
She
said she was flown to Paris and put up in a hotel at Neymar's expense.
Ms
Trindade she was an "ordinary person - a model and a student of interior
design" and a "daughter and mother".
The
interviewer asked Ms Trindade whether what happened was an assault or rape, and
Ms Trindade replied that it was "an assault together with rape".
She
said that when she met Neymar, he was "aggressive, totally different than
the boy that I got to know through the messages".
Ms
Trindade said she was initially prepared for consensual sex but demanded the
use of a condom. She alleged that Neymar refused, became aggressive again and
raped her. She said she told him to stop but he refused.
SBT
published part of the interview on Twitter (in Portuguese).
The video footage shows an altercation purported to be between
Ms Trindade and Neymar in a hotel room, reportedly filmed by Ms Trindade.
The
pair lie down on a bed, after which the woman stands and starts to slap the
man, who defends himself with his feet.
The
woman says: "I'm going to hit you, you know why. Because you beat me up
yesterday", suggesting the altercation was a second meeting. Neymar has
said that he and Ms Trindade met twice.
In
the SBT interview, Ms Trindade said she only began to understand everything
that had happened to her after the first meeting ended, and that she returned
because she wanted to prove the events and "wanted justice".
The
video was shown on the Brazilian channel TV Record.
Neymar has not commented so far on the TV interview. His
father, Neymar dos Santos, was interviewed by TV Record about the hotel room
footage and he said it was clearly a set-up that proved his son was innocent.
In
an earlier statement, Neymar's management called the accusations
"unjust" and said the footballer had been the "victim of an
attempted extortion".
Neymar
repeated the extortion accusation in a seven-minute video on his Instagram
page.
Speaking
in Portuguese, the footballer said: "What happened that day was a
relationship between a man and a woman, within four walls, like with any
couple. And the next day nothing much happened. We kept exchanging messages.
She asked me for a souvenir for [her child]."
During
the video, the 27-year-old showed what he claimed were a long series of
WhatsApp messages with Ms Trindade, including intimate photographs of her.
He
said he had to make them public to "prove that nothing really
happened". In her interview, Ms Trindade denied accusations of extortion,
saying: "I want justice, not financial compensation."
The lawyers who first represented Ms Trindade say her initial
complaint was of "aggression" or "physical violence" by
Neymar. They said they had discussed a settlement with Neymar's lawyers but
that those lawyers then rejected it. The two legal teams dispute who initially
asked for the meeting.
Ms
Trindade then filed a rape allegation in São Paulo last Friday. Her lawyers
said the allegation was "incompatible with the strategy" they had
agreed, and they parted company with her on Saturday. She now has new
representation.
In
her interview, Ms Trindade said of a lawyer in her first legal team: "He
didn't fully believe me. I felt he was prejudiced. He portrayed it as if I'd
not been raped, that I had wanted it."
Neymar
could also face investigation over publishing the images of Ms Trindade without
her permission, as the act may infringe laws designed to protect privacy.
Source: CNN