DA COSTA: STAR CLEARED OF SEX ATTACK
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Snaresbrook Crown Court/ Nick Cullen
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16 September 2011
With pic
grab…1
A former Premier league ace was cleared of groping a young woman in a nightclub today (Fri) but was fined £1,000 after he admitted slapping her in the face.
Former West Ham defender Manual Da Costa, 25, was accused of grabbing the office administrator’s breast and crotch as she walked past his VIP table.
He was cleared of sexual assault following a trial at Snaresbrook Crown court after he claimed he had only put his hand on her shoulder and back in order to talk to her.
The star had admitted assaulting the 20-year-old but said it was a ‘reflex action’ after she ‘overreacted’ to the physical contact by hitting him.
Judge David Radford fined Da Costa £1,000 and ordered him to pay compensation to the victim of £250.
He granted an application for taxpayer to fund the costs the wealthy footballer incurred attending his trial.
Da Costa will have seven days to pay the fine, or will face a 28 day prison term in default.
The judge said: ‘I assume he is not short of a penny or two.’
He noted that the footballer had no previous convictions and said he passed sentence on the basis of his version of events, in accordance with jury’s verdict on the sexual assault count.
He said: ‘Following the guidelines, the appropriate way of dealing with this matter is by financial penalty.
‘There is no reason to believe that you will have any difficulty in paying it, given your substantial livelihood as a professional footballer.’
Sonia Woodley, QC, representing Da Costa, said her client was ‘delighted’ at the not guilty verdict.
The court had previously heard that the Portugal youth international faces the sack from his current club, Russian giant Lokomotiv Moscow, after he missed a European game to attend his trial.
Da Costa attacked the victim at the end of a boozy night out in Faces nightclub in Gants Hill, Essex – a venue popular with West Ham footballers.
The club had played an away game against Wolverhampton Wanderers on the afternoon of October 16 last year, and following his return to the capital on the team bus Da Costa went out to a bar with his cousin and a friend.
The trio moved on to the nightclub at around midnight, where they stayed in the caged-off VIP area talking to girls. In his evidence, the star said he drank eight or nine vodka Red Bulls in total over the course of the evening.
The victim had been in a different bar with four other young woman. The group ate at KFC before moving on to Faces, where their friend was playing a DJ set.
She told the court that she drank around six vodkas, but that she was ‘in control’ that evening, but that she was in control of herself.
At around 2am on Sunday, October 17, she walked across the VIP area, passing Da Costa’s table, jurors heard.
The prosecution alleged that the star grabbed her hand to stop her, before putting one hand on her groin over her dress and squeezing her breast with the other.
The victim said she ‘flinched back’ before slapping Da Costa in the face. She said he then struck her hard in return, leaving her with a red mark on her cheek.
It was further alleged that Da Costa slapped the victim again before he was ejected from the club.
Da Costa, who is half Portuguese and half Moroccan but grew up in France, gave evidence to the court through a French interpreter.
He told the jury that the victim had made eye contact with him and walked towards him as if she wanted to talk to him.
He said he took her hand, before placing one hand and her shoulder and the other on the small of her back as he stood up to talk to her. He said he needed to talk into her ear as the music in the club was so loud.
He said it was possible that he had accidentally brushed her breast with his hand as the venue was very crowded and they were close together, but insisted he had not squeezed it or touched her private parts.
Da Costa said that as he got up to speak to her, she pushed him away and slapped him in the face, adding: ‘I was surprised, and I gave her a slap back. It was reflex action.’
Asked if he accepted that it was wrong to do so, he said: ‘Yes’, but insisted that he had only struck her once, in response to her initial slap.
Cross examining the victim, Miss Woodley suggested that she pressed charges because she wanted to cash in on the footballer’s fame.
The young woman, who gave her evidence from behind a screen, vehemently denied this, stating: ‘If I wanted to do it for money, I could have done it in other ways.’
Da Costa, of (249) Wards Wharf Approach, Silvertown, east London, admitted assault by beating but denied sexual assault.
The jury of eight women and four men acquitted him of the sexual assault charge after deliberating for a little over three hours.
The defender joined West Ham in August 2009 on a three-year contract, but left in June this year to play for Lokomotiv.
He previously played in France for AS Nancy and in Holland for PSV Eindhoven and has been capped 22 times by Portugal at under-20, under 21 and under-23 level.
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