Crown prosecutors have dropped a sex assault charge against a Brazilian soccer player who played in last summer's Pan Am Games, but his attorney says police behaved irresponsibly by publicizing the accusation against his client.
The charge against Lucas Domingues Piazon, 21, was dropped Tuesday morning, as Crown prosecutors long ago decided there was no reasonable prospect of securing a conviction, lawyer Brian Greenspan said.
“This unsupportable and irresponsible allegation by Toronto police wrongly and unfairly tarnished Mr. Piazon’s unblemished reputation,” Greenspan said. “Prior to the announcement, the police knew that today’s decision by the crown to withdraw the charge was inevitable.”
He said police “clearly ignored” the Crown when they held a press conference on Oct. 29 to accuse Piazon of sexual assault in relation to an incident that allegedly occurred on the night of July 25, 2015.
“The police chose to disregard the balance and fair-minded assessment made by the Crown and to defiantly proceed to announce charges when the conclusion had been reached that the evidence could not justify a trial,” Greenspan said.
He continued on to say that three Crown attorneys reviewed the facts of the case and told police the charges “would be withdrawn.”
Piazon plays as a forward and winger for Reading Football Club and is on a year-long loan from London-based Chelsea, one of the richest clubs in Europe.
He was sought on an Ontario-wide warrant, which enabled his arrest if he set foot in the province.
Toronto Police spokesperson Mark Pugash said Tuesday that Chief Mark Saunders has asked the service’s Professional Standards Unit to look into the allegations made by Greenspan.
Pugash confirmed Tuesday the charge against Piazon had been dropped but said the charge against Andrey Da Silva Ventura, another player accused of sexual assault in relation to the same incident, is still outstanding.
Ventura currently plays in Brazil for club AD Cabofriense. Police would have to engage in an arduous legal effort to extradite Ventura to Canada to face the charge against him, as the extradition treaty both countries signed in 1995 is not yet in force.
The 21-year-old complainant in this case alleges that she and a female friend were at the Drake Hotel on Queen Street West, when they met up with Piazon and Da Silva Ventura.
The victim, her friend and the two suspects left the Drake for a residence in Toronto. Toronto police sex crimes unit Insp. Joanna Beaven-Desjardins said that after the victim went to sleep in her bedroom, the two suspects allegedly entered the room and sexually assaulted her.
The two men fled when the victim woke up, Beaven-Desjardins said. The victim reported the assault on July 26. Beaven-Desjardins said the two accused were not aware of the accusation before they left Canada.
They left Canada with their team on July 27. Between July 7 and July 27, the two suspects stayed at the Pan Am Athletes Village east of downtown Toronto.
Greenspan said the media attention generated by the police press conference about the charges damaged his client’s reputation.
“What we have now is a permanent record on the internet,” alluding also to edits made to Piazon’s Wikipedia page that included the allegation against him the day police held the media conference.
“Hopefully this will now be corrected by his exoneration.”
Police have maintained an Ontario-wide warrant for another member of Brazil’s Pan Am Games team, 27-year-old water polo player Thye Mattos Ventura Bezerra, in connection with a sexual assault alleged to have taken place on July 16.
In that incident, a 22-year-old woman reported she was sexually assaulted while she slept in her downtown Toronto apartment.
Toronto police sex crimes unit Insp. Joanna Beaven-Desjardins said investigators believe the two incidents are not related.
