There Are Multiple Rapists Playing at The World Cup. Why Isn't Anyone Talking About It?

Apparently accusations don't ruin men's lives if you're good at football. The World Cup has a rape problem when it let an accused four-time rapist play.

Four separate allegations of sexual violence, spanning more than fifteen years. And somehow, none of is it in the major media outlets. I’ll take a wild guess here and assume you haven’t heard anything about this either.

Ghana’s Thomas Partey is currently charged with seven counts of rape and one count of sexual assault, relating to four different women. He denies all of it. His trial starts in June 2027 at Southwark Crown Court. He played for Ghana against England this week.

Partey, who denies the charges of rape and sexual assault, played against England just last Tuesday.

Morocco’s captain, Achraf Hakimi, was just ordered to stand trial in France over an alleged 2023 rape. He denies all of the allegations and he’s one of Morocco’s most important players, still on the pitch.

Japan’s Kaishu Sano was arrested in 2024 on suspicion of gang rape. Prosecutors dropped the case after his lawyers reached a settlement with the woman involved. He issued an apology. He’s now playing in his country’s biggest tournament.

And Portugal’s captain, Cristiano Ronaldo, quite literally the most famous footballer alive, was accused of rape by Kathryn Mayorga over an alleged 2009 incident in a Las Vegas hotel room. No criminal charges were ever filed, in fact prosecutors said in 2019 too much time had passed to build a case. Ronaldo paid Mayorga $375,000 in a 2010 confidentiality settlement, he has always maintained the encounter was consensual, and has spent years in court successfully keeping that settlement sealed. He’s leading Portugal at his sixth World Cup as we speak.

None of these men have been convicted of anything. I want to say that plainly, because it’s true and because it matters. But “not convicted” is not the same as “nothing happened here,” and four cases like this in one tournament, should not be something to be ignored or brushed off. It should at least be the headline of major media outlets .

“Accusations Ruin Men’s Lives.” Not when you’re good at football apparently.

We hear this all the time: that rape allegations is a death sentence for a man’s career, that he’s totally finished the moment a woman opens her mouth, that due process for women apparently means total devastation for men before even a single fact is established.

I would love to see that theory tested on anyone in this article.

Tell it to Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused of sexual assault during his Senate confirmation hearing and now sits on the US Supreme Court for life.

lAnd what about Steven van de Velde, a convicted child rapist who represented the Netherlands in beach volleyball at the Paris Olympics, with his federation’s full backing and his country’s flag on his chest?

And what about the man who settled a rape allegation for $375,000 and is currently the captain of his national team at a World Cup?

The accusation doesn’t end anything. It is, at most, a minor scheduling inconvenience or some visa problem. A press conference question that a coach gets visibly irritated by. That’s it. That’s the consequence that these men have to suffer with.

Partney and Hakimi: source

It’s Not a Coincidence. This Is Rape Culture, and Football Is All Over It.

I’m angry writing this, and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. Because what we’re looking at isn’t four unrelated men who happened to do bad things. It’s a system, built by men to benefit men.

Rape culture isn’t a slogan. It’s a specific, well-documented set of conditions, it’s an environment that treats sexual aggression as normal, that protects perpetrators when they’re good at football, and that punishes the people who speak up more than it punishes the people who hurt them. Football has all three, at every single damn level.

Just take a look at the locker room talk Elite men’s sport runs on a hyper-masculine ideal: total dominance, conquest, entitlement to whatever you can take. That sort of toxic environment doesn’t just stay on the pitch. Research on team environments in sport has repeatedly found that this dynamic trivializes consent and normalizes degrading language about women among teammates who are taught, from childhood , that this is just what being one of the guys looks like.

Then there’s the institutional protection, which is the part that should make you angry. This isn’t inly about international football by the way. Look at Steubenville, where a school and a town closed ranks around two high school football players who raped an unconscious girl, and the community turned its anger on her for reporting it.

And these professional clubs and federations, choose to let players keep training and keep competing while under active investigation, because winning matters more than whether their roster includes someone who allegedly raped someone. Villarreal signed Partey after he was charged and said, essentially, that signing him anyway was compatible with respecting “the presumption of innocence.” That phrase is doing a lot of work to cover for a financial decision.

And then there’s the violence the sport produces in its own audience. This is the part people really don’t want to sit with because it makes them uncomfortable and I get it. Studies in England have found domestic abuse reports rise by around 38% when England loses a match, and by roughly 26% when they win or draw. The increase doesn’t even depend on the result. One analysis found alcohol-related domestic abuse cases jump by close to 50% after an England win specifically. Read that again: even if it’s a win. A literal celebration.

Men coming home elated, drunk, and violent, in numbers high enough that rape and domestic abuse centers constantly warn about it.

So when people ask “what does any of this have to do with football,” it has to do with absolutely everything. A sport that already produces a measurable spike in violence against women every single time it’s played at full intensity is now also handing its biggest arena, completely without comment, to multiple men accused of sexual violence themselves.

Ghana’s manager, Carlos Queiroz, was asked about Partey’s charges. He said he’d let things run their course, that eventually, like a river reaching the ocean, the truth would come out.

What he’s actually saying is that he’s not waiting for the truth or justice, he already made his decision, and the truth is just something to deal with later if it turns out badly.

Partey missed Ghana’s opening match because Canada denied him a visa. Canadian immigration law requires disclosure of pending criminal cases, and reportedly his application didn’t disclose it. Ghana’s federation called the situation “mischaracterised.”

Canada is currently the only body involved in this tournament that has made an actual decision based on the charges against any of these men. The US let him in (not a big surprise considering who the sitting US President is). FIFA hasn’t said a single word about any of it, unsurprisingly.

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Why the Silence?

If you don’t follow football, there’s a good chance you didn’t know about any of this happening. That’s not an accident because FIFA hasn’t openly addressed Partey, Hakimi, Sano, or the history attached to Ronaldo in any meaningful way.

There is no official statement, no press, nothing. Silence is a choice, and in this case it’s a deeply convenient one, confronting it would mean admitting they have some duty of care to survivors and to the public, and right now, they have made it very clear they don’t think they do.

The tournament will go on exactly as planned. Millions of people will watch these men compete, most without knowing any of this. And once again, the message lands the same way it always does: if you’re good enough at your sport, an accusation of rape is a delay, not a consequence. Sometimes it isn’t even that.

Where are the consequences?

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