Nearly three months after the alleged facts, the position of the prosecution was eagerly awaited. The public prosecutor’s office in Mendoza, Argentina, ruled in favor of dismissing the case, Friday October 4, in the case of the two French rugby players accused of aggravated rape, on the night of July 6 to 7, while the French XV had just played a test match against the Argentina team. Facts which allegedly took place in a hotel room in Mendoza, where the players were staying. The accused, Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, both aged 21, assure that the sexual relationship with the complainant, a 39-year-old Argentinian woman they met in a nightclub, was consensual.
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The prosecution’s request for dismissal, “for doubt or lack of evidence”must be examined during a hearing set for October 18 which rugby players will be able to attend virtually, confirms Monde Martin Ahumada, spokesperson for the Mendoza public prosecutor’s office. The court decision may be made the same day, according to the prosecution, or under deliberation.
One of the Argentinian lawyers of the two French rugby players, Me Rafael Cuneo Libarona, receives the request from the Public Prosecutor’s Office “with satisfaction”. “There is a lot of need to protect women, women in Argentina and around the world. But I believe that we must also protect men who suffer from false accusations”he says Mondeclaiming innocence and “courage” of its customers.
The plaintiff’s lawyer, M.e Natacha Romano, for her part, mentioned “brutal sexual abuse”. She denounces a request for dismissal “premature”. “We must continue the investigation because valuable evidence must still be provided,” she assures. “They brutalized me and considered me a piece of meat”accused the complainant in an interview broadcast by “Envoyé Spécial”, on France 2, in September, evoking “bruises around the eyes, on the face, on the outside and inside of the legs, (…) edema in the glottis and others in the left maxilla.
“Story neither free nor spontaneous”
The request for dismissal comes shortly after a psychological and psychiatric expert report on the complainant carried out by a team mandated by the prosecution. His findings, dated September 24, appear to weaken the alleged victim’s story. Expertise pays off “a series of inconsistencies and contradictions (…) which overall paint an unlikely story” of the complainant, with “contradictory and inconsistent content when explaining situations with which it is confronted”.
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