Last Tuesday, after more than 3 years of investigation and two days of hearing, the two thirty-year-olds accused of gang rape of a vulnerable person were sentenced to 12 and 10 years of criminal imprisonment. They both appealed this judgment to the registry of the Haute-Loire criminal court. A new trial will have to be organized.
The two men, whose criminal history includes 19 criminal convictions for the first and 15 for the second, have been proclaiming their innocence since April 26, 2021, the day after the gang rape denounced by a vulnerable young woman who was living, at that moment- there, in Vorey-sur-Arzon.
The victim had reported three non-consensual reports during the same evening, including two with Sébastien Poiret, the oldest accused, and one by Jonathan Bergeron. The two men had not adopted the same defense strategy: the first refusing to acknowledge the slightest sexual relationship with the young woman and the second evoking consensual acts.
It was the testimonies of a neighbor and that of a third man present in the apartment at the time when part of the facts were committed, which were decisive. At the end of the debates, the Advocate General was convinced that the first version given by the victim was the one to be retained. She had requested 12 years of criminal imprisonment against the two accused. The third man, convicted of the related offense of failure to report a crime, did not appeal.
