Diego Maradona
In the latest sports news reports, there are two high-profile stories related to sex scandals at once. Cuban Mavis Alvarez said that 20 years ago she was raped by Diego Maradona, and she was then a minor. Well, in China they cannot find the famous tennis player Peng Shuai, who accused the former vice-premier of the country of forcing him to have sex. We understand the details of both scandals.
Mavis Alvarez, a Cuban resident, spoke to the press and made a shocking confession: according to the woman, in 2001, when she was only 16, the legendary Diego Maradona raped her. Let us remind you that the Argentine footballer passed away a year ago. At the time of the events described by Alvarez, the athlete was 41 years old, he came to Cuba to be treated for drug addiction. Then, according to Mavis, they met and spent several months together. At the same time, she claims, the athlete entered into an intimate relationship with her without her consent.
Mavis Alvarez
Speaking to Argentine media, Alvarez said:
Mom wanted to visit me at the house where he lived in Havana. She knocked on the door, but he did not open … He raped me, that's what happened. He covered my mouth so that I would not scream, and abused me.
Mavis has filed a lawsuit against Maradona's inner circle, and a human trafficking case is underway. The woman stated that she was forcibly held in the hotel room of a football player in Cuba and he forced her into intimacy. According to Alvarez, she was also taken to Argentina, and in the homeland of Maradona, she lived with him from November 2001 to February 2002. During this period, says the Cuban, the athlete “forced her to undergo breast augmentation surgery” because he was not happy with her size. Although the girl was underage, she was operated on without the permission of her parents.
According to Mavis, Maradona forced her to use alcohol and drugs from the very moment they met, and also showed aggression towards her and even threatened with violence. The woman cited several cases as an example: for example, according to her story, an athlete once threw her on the bed and slapped her in the face when she took his phone. On another occasion, Maradona was “dragging her by the hair a whole flight of stairs” when she accidentally hit him while dancing in a nightclub.
I was afraid for my life. I even thought about suicide several times,
– Mavis admitted in an interview.
According to the Cuban woman, she regrets that she ever met a football legend:
At first I was fascinated by Diego, by the words he spoke to me, by his way of life. At first I felt happy, but at some point everything changed completely.
Another sex scandal is now hotly debated in China. There, one of the country's most successful tennis players, Peng Shuai, accused former First Deputy Prime Minister Zhang Gaoli of forcing closeness.
Peng Shuai, 35, who became the world's No. 1 in women's doubles in 2014, posted a post on the Chinese social network Weibo in early November. According to the publication, the tennis player once had a relationship with married Zhang Gaoli, then, after his appointment to the standing committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, the politician broke off relations with her. But seven years later, he decided to renew them, despite the reluctance of the athlete. According to Peng Shuai, Zhang Gaoli, now 75, invited her to play tennis with him and his wife three years ago – and abused her former mistress at home.
Peng Shuai
The post of the athlete disappeared from her account (to which about half a million people are subscribed) literally half an hour after publication. Comments on her page were closed, and search engines began to block searches by her name. The social network Weibo has stopped even showing search results for the query “tennis”. Posts discussing the situation were also promptly removed from all possible platforms. It turns out that Chinese users cannot find information about this story in the public domain.
Peng Shuai
Moreover, Peng Shuai herself has disappeared: since the publication of the post, no one knows about her whereabouts. Twitter users began to express fears under the hashtag #WhereIsPengShuai (#WhereIsPengShuai), and the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) has officially called for an investigation into the athlete's claims and ensure her safety. By the way, the head of the organization, Steve Simon, received a letter allegedly written by a tennis player, but neither he himself nor the public are sure that the author is Peng Shuai. The message says that the athlete is safe and “just resting”, and is not lost at all.
Zhang Gaoli
China's Foreign Ministry said it had no knowledge of the situation. Representatives of other government agencies in the country did not comment, as did the alleged offender of the tennis player Zhang Gaoli.
