Footballer Rafa Mir sentenced to eight and a half years for sexual assault

Former Wolves and Nottingham Forest striker Rafa Mir has been sentenced to eight and a half years in prison over a violent sexual assault.

The 28-year-old footballer learnt his fate this Monday just over a fortnight after his one-day trial at a court in Valencia.

The soccer star, now on loan at LaLiga side Elche from Sevilla, had protested his innocence at the 28 May hearing after public prosecutors demanded a 10.5-year jail term on conviction.

Today his three trial judges sentenced him to seven years' jail for a crime of “sexual assault with penetration involving the use of violence” against a woman he had met hours earlier at a nightclub and taken back home with him.

He was also sentenced to 18 months for a crime of wounding and given a 13-year restraining order preventing him from going within 500 metres of his victim.

A friend of the former Spain youth international, Pablo Jara, tried for a separate sexual assault on a female friend of the unnamed woman, was sentenced to a total of two and a half years in prison.

The decisions were delivered in writing, as is normal in Spain, rather than in open court.

Both men are expected to launch appeals which will mean they will not be ordered to report for jail immediately.

The crimes happened in the early hours of 1 September 2024 at Mir’s home in Betera near Valencia. His victim was 21 at the time.

The footballer had sex with Jara’s female accuser before turning his attention to her younger friend.

In their pre-trial indictment prosecutors said he “lifted her up in his arms and threw her into the pool with her clothes on” before “grabbing her tightly and, with the intention of satisfying his lustful desires, began kissing her face and neck.”

They claimed he penetrated her using his fingers, the reason he was facing a far higher prison demand than Jara, after forcing her to kiss him.

The second sexual assault took place after the young woman fled the footballer’s house and phoned her dad asking him to come and collect her, before realising she had left her handbag inside the property and returned to fetch it.

The judges ruled the complainant’s testimony meets the three requirements necessary to overcome the footballer’s presumption of innocence: absence of subjective incredibility, plausibility of the account, and consistency in the accusation.

Mir has yet to make any official comment.

The frontman, full name Rafael Mir Vicente, won the 2019 European Championship with the Spain national under-21 football team and a silver medal with the Olympic team at the 2020 tournament.

He joined Wolves on a four-and-a-half year contract in January 2018 and took the number 9 shirt, linking up with former Valencia boss Nuno Espírito Santo.

He had loan spells at Las Palmas and Nottingham Forest while with Wolves, and left the club for good in August 2021 when he signed a six-year contract with Sevilla.

He returned to boyhood club Valencia on loan in July 2024 before switching to Elche.

Although he protested his innocence after his arrest, he became the target of regular abuse by away supporters following his release on bail and return to club duties.

In a statement after his detention, Rafa Mir said insisting he was innocent of any wrongdoing: “I have full confidence in this country’s judicial system with which I have cooperated from the outset to clarify what happened.”

He went on to apologise to his teammates and club, which handed him a record fine, for partying into the early hours of the morning the night that led to his prosecution and this Monday's conviction.

Rafa Mir claimed from the stand when he gave evidence everything that happened inside his home that night was consensual.

He told the judges, who sat without a jury: “It wasn’t a rape, it was jealousy.”

Answering questions from only his defence lawyer Jaime Campaner, Mir admitted to penetrating with his fingers one of the two women in his bathroom, but said he had the consent of his female accuser to do so.

She told the court in contrast, speaking of the moment she returned to the house to fetch her forgotten handbag: “I went into the house and he grabbed me hard by the arm.

“He took me into the bathroom and locked the door. He started doing the same thing to me he had done at the swimming pool.

“That's when I started crying and telling him to stop, that I wanted to leave. He didn't stop.”

Mir’s last social media post two days ago showed him relaxing on a beach in shorts and a vest top.