One of the world’s most powerful football agents has been accused of ‘threatening to kill’ a woman he allegedly kept as a sex slave if she ever spoke out. 

Jonathan Barnett, who was behind Gareth Bale’s £85million move to Real Madrid, faces claims he raped the mother more than 39 times and subjected her to horrific torture. 

The woman, an Australian citizen, has presented her own account of the alleged torture for the first time in a new filing at a district court in California in response to Mr Barnett’s motion to dismiss the case. 

Mr Barnett has ‘categorically’ denied all the claims of the original lawsuit, which claims that he trafficked, raped and tortured the woman between July 2017 and November 2023. 

In the woman’s statement, she alleges that Mr Barnett ‘forced me to work in servitude to him, controlling me using numerous means, including psychological and physical abuse, threats to harm me and my children, and tricking me into financial dependence.’ 

She adds: ‘I lived in fear of my life during that time, and still do today, as he threatened to kill me and my children if we ever spoke out.’ 

The woman claims Mr Barnett ‘lured’ her to London with the promise of lucrative work, but then the football mogul ‘exerted control over my life as his sex slave, forcing me to follow a rigid set of rules, engage in commercial sex acts, and regularly commit self-harm and perform other dehumanizing acts.’ 

He made her call him 'master,' referred to her simply as 'slave,' forced her to drink her own urine and kicked and beat her so violently she developed a tumour on her back which requires chemotherapy treatment, the statement of claim lodged in California states. 

The alleged victim also claims that Mr Barnett forced her to search for other women to be his slaves, in a practice he referred to as ‘slave hunting.’ 

Mr Barnett denies this claim specifically and others made against him. 

When the allegations first became public, he said in a statement: 'The claims made in today's complaint against me have no basis in reality and are untrue. 

'We will vigorously defend this lawsuit through the appropriate legal process. I am looking forward to being entirely vindicated and exonerated.' 

Mr Barnett’s lawyers previously filed a declaration in an attempt to have the civil complaint in the US dismissed, claiming that any contact he had with the woman was in Britain. 

Documents lodged by his legal team state that the pair had been in a ‘consensual personal relationship’ and he admitted to have paid her more than £1,000,000 following the end of this relationship. 

‘When my relationship with plaintiff ended in or around September 2021, she threatened to publicly disclose the relationship unless I paid her significant sums of money,’ he said in a statement. ‘

As a result of those threats, I paid plaintiff for a number of years, ultimately paying her well in excess of £1,000,000.’ 

The US lawsuit also names Mr Barnett’s former employer, Creative Arts Agency (CAA), but the firm said the woman had never been an employee, consultant or contractor of CAA. 

Mr Barnett left the company in February 2024, CAA added in a statement. 

Barnett, who was credited as introducing Lennox Lewis to the world of boxing and bringing cricket to South Africa at Nelson Mandela's request, co-founded the agency CAA Stellar with David Manasseh in the early 1990s.

In 2019, he was named by Forbes as the most powerful agent in the world and his firm was incorporated into Hollywood talent agency ICM Partners the following year. Barnett, who was educated at St Marylebone Grammar School, announced his retirement in 2024.