Cuban Woman Claims Maradona Raped Her, Says He ‘Stole My Childhood’

20 years after the incident, a Cuban woman accuses Maradona of violence and abuse, including rape.

Late Argentinean Footballer, Diego Armando Maradona

Photo: IANS

A 37-year-old woman from Cuba, Mavys Alvarez Rego, has come forward and accused late legendary footballer Diego Maradona and his companions of violence and abuse, including raping and holding her against her will. The Cuban woman has said she had an affair with Maradona as a minor 20 years ago, AFP reported.

On Monday, she told the press, how she had met Maradona at 16, back when the star, then in his forties, lived in Cuba, while undergoing his drug treatment.

"I was dazzled, he won me over... But after two months everything started to change. I loved him but I hated him too, I even thought about suicide," she said at the conference, while also claiming that he had also forced her into trying cocaine.

Maradona, widely considered as one of the greatest football stars ever, died last year after undergoing brain surgery on a blood clot.

The complaint filed by the woman is related to a journey she took to Argentina with Maradona back in 2001, when he was around 40 and she was 16. She said that during the trip, she had been held against her will for several weeks in a hotel by his entourage and was not permitted to go out alone, and was also forced into a breast augmentation operation.

The complaint has not been filed by the woman herself, instead an organisation called "Foundation for Peace," filed the complaint after seeing her confessions in the American media in the last few weeks.

The complaint focuses particularly on human trafficking, deprivation of liberty, forced servitude, assault and battery.

Although, she had earlier described her relationship with Maradona in media interviews as consensual, she said that he had forced himself upon her on one occasion.

“He covers my mouth, he rapes me, I don’t want to think about it too much,” she said at the news conference in Buenos Aires.

“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.”

She expressed that she was speaking after over 20 years of silence in order to balance out some of the stories that were told in a TV series about Maradona recently.

“It’s hard to be in his country, to see that he is everywhere, he is an idol and at the same time everything I remember about him as a person feels ugly. I have done what I had to do, the rest I leave to the courts.

"I achieved my goal: to say what happened to me, to prevent it from happening to others, or at least so that other girls feel the strength, the courage to speak up," she added further.

The five members of Maradona's entourage, who have been implicated, denied allegations through their lawyers whereas one has also filed a counter-complaint against the Argentinean NGO for slander.