Introduction
Barely 24 hours after Ghanaian footballer, Thomas Partey was formally charged with rape on July 4, 2025, by the United Kingdom’s Metropolitan Police, a video surfaced on X about his alleged initial response to the charges.
The video shared by an X user by name Bekar Sebatindila captioned: “This is Thomas Partey’s statement after being accused of rape,” has since been deleted but it has been reshared by other users (here, here, here).
“I didn’t do it. They always want to accuse me of rape but that’s what happens when you are black and refuse to renew your contract with a club like Arsenal,” Partey is heard saying at the beginning of the one minute and five seconds video.
The 32-year-old goes on to speak about preferring to go to jail rather than stay at Arsenal under the current manager, Mikel Arteta, indicating that the girls are often hired to seduce black players to claim they’d been raped so as to extort them later.
Also in the video, Partey decries racism in Europe, urges his fans to fight racism in the comment section, adding that despite knowing who is behind the accusation, the person is too big for him to fight alone. He adds that if fellow footballers, Mendy and Greenwood survived rape charges, he also will.
Visual analysis
GhanaFact analysed the video looking for possible Artificial Intelligence (AI) hints. We concluded on the following two grounds that the video was a deepfake.
- Partey’s voice and tone appeared manipulated, given the slurry and slanging nature of the voice, which is unlike that of the player.
- There is an unnatural and jerky movement of the head, and some words and sentences are incomplete.
Has Partey personally issued a statement?
Additionally, GhanaFact searched all known social media handles of Thomas Partey and found no official statement posted by the player regarding the ongoing legal issue. No credible news outlet, local or international, had also reported on any direct response by Partey.
RelatedNews
The only publicly known response associated with Partey was a statement from his lawyer, Jenny Wiltshire.
It read: “He has fully cooperated with the police and CPS throughout their three-year investigation. Thomas Partey denies all the charges against him. He now welcomes the opportunity to finally clear his name.”
Origin of the video: TikTok user
GhanaFact traced the source of the viral video to a TikTok user whose username, @sserona12, was embossed on the video. The account’s bio had a disclaimer that read: “Videos here are strictly for entertainment.”
Within three days, the video got 5.4 million views, becoming the most-watched video on the account. GhanaFact also observed a label on the video that read: “Creator labeled as AI-generated.”
According to our checks, the label is part of TikTok’s rules that require users to appropriately label AI content before posting.
Understanding TikTok’s creator label
Creator label: Creators apply this label to indicate that their content was completely generated or significantly edited by AI. The label will read “creator labeled as AI-generated”.
TikTok also reserves the right to label content it detects to be AI-generated. The social media platform also details how a person can label a post as such and how users can also report content that is not labelled.
“Please note that misleadingly labeling unaltered content with this label is a violation of our Terms of Service and may result in the removal of content,” TikTok added.
Conclusion
The video of Partey allegedly reacting to recent rape charges is AI-generated. Even though TikTok had clearly labelled it as such, when it found its way to X, users shared it without any disclaimer, exposing users to possible misinformation.
