A court in Spain has sentenced Spanish forward Rafa Mir to eight-and-a-half years in prison after finding him guilty of sexually assaulting two women and causing bodily harm, a ruling that caps a case stemming from an incident at his home in September 2024. The verdict was handed down by the Fourth Section of the Valencia Provincial Court, with an official announcement made on Monday by the Valencian Community High Court of Justice on its social media platform X.
The sentence is broken down into seven years in prison for the charge of sexual assault and an additional 18 months for causing bodily harm. In addition to the prison term, the court has ordered Mir to pay the victim €64,000 ($74,000) in compensation, covering both physical injuries and emotional damages. The player was also issued a restraining order, banning him from coming within 500 meters of the victim for a period of 10 years.
The charges stem from events that took place in the early morning hours of September 1, 2024, at Mir’s residence in the Torre En Conill residential development in Bétera, near Valencia. According to court documents and testimony, Mir and a friend met two women at a nightclub in Valencia. After the club closed, the group returned to the footballer’s home. While Mir had consensual relations with one woman, the court found the striker had sexually assaulted a second 21-year-old woman on two separate occasions within the house—first in the swimming pool and then later inside a bathroom. The victim testified that she had expressed her intention to leave and that Mir had forcibly grabbed her, despite her pleas for him to stop.
A second defendant, Pablo Jara, a fellow footballer who was a friend of Mir, was also convicted in the same trial. Jara received a sentence of two-and-a-half years in prison for his involvement in the sexual assault of a second victim and was ordered to pay compensation of €6,280.
Throughout the judicial process, Mir has maintained his innocence. He acknowledged having sexual relations with the complainant but asserted that the act was consensual. Following the verdict, the player released a statement saying, “I do not agree with the sentence and we will appeal in the coming days. I continue to trust in Justice.” This indicates that an appeal is expected to be filed.
The case has sent shockwaves through Spanish football. The 28-year-old striker, a product of Valencia’s youth academy, had a professional career that included stints with Premier League clubs Wolverhampton Wanderers and Nottingham Forest, before being acquired by Sevilla for a reported fee of around €16 million in 2021. At the time of the incident, Mir was on loan at Valencia from Sevilla and was subsequently arrested on September 2, 2024. Following his arrest, the player was provisionally released after spending two nights in custody and was handed a two-match suspension by Valencia. He spent the 2025-26 season on loan at Elche, and his contract there is set to expire at the end of this month. Before his legal troubles, Mir had also represented Spain at youth international levels and was a member of the Spanish squad that won a silver medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
