Seven years before the Auradou-Jegou affair, it was another emblematic episode of sexual violence in rugby. The field and the defeat, the alcohol and the drugs, the rape accusation and the violence. Five former players of the Grenoble club are on trial from this Monday, December 2 before the Bordeaux Assize Court. The Irishman Denis Coulson, 30 years old, the New Zealander Rory Grice, 34 years old, and the Frenchman Loïck Jammes, 29 years old, appear for gang rape of a student who was then 20 years old. The Irishman Chris Farrell, 31, and the New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 30, are on trial for failure to assist a person in danger.
On March 11, 2017, three young women met rugby players in a Bordeaux bar. Professionals who had just lost heavily to Union Bordeaux-Bègles with their club FC Grenoble in a crucial match for remaining in the Top 14. The evening continued in a disco before one of the three women, V. , leaves by taxi with Denis Coulson around 4 a.m. She claims to have no memory of this moment. She wakes up three hours later, naked on a bed with the sensation of being penetrated by a metal object, surrounded by two naked men and three other clothed ones. Based on the interviews of the accused, witnesses and a sex tape filmed by Coulson, investigators mention several fellatios and the introduction of a banana, a bottle and crutches into the victim's vagina.
Coulson, Jammes and Grice admitted to having had sexual relations with V. but claim that she was consenting, even taking the initiative. Farrell, who owned the crutches, was in the room and Hayes also witnessed the incident. “Perhaps this young girl did not want what happened but her behavior did not suggest to these boys, at least to my client, that she did not agree”estimated Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, Denis Coulson's lawyer. “She was very active, she kissed him in a nightclub, gave him oral sex in the taxi, she sent him signs saying: “I’m in””continued Mr. Dreyfus-Schmidt.
“Rogue” behavior of “stadium gods”
According to a toxicological expert, she had between 2.2 and 3 grams of alcohol per liter of blood. On video surveillance images, she can barely stand when she arrives at the hotel, to the point of being “constantly maintained” by a player, notes the accusation. “No one has to be perfect from dawn to bed. It's not because [l’alcoolisation] It is his fact that this authorizes [les autres] to do anything and everything with your body”argued the young woman's lawyer, Me Anne Cadiot-Feidt. “The obligation, when we detect a risky situation in a person, is to protect them. Without turning into a superhero, you can call a taxi and not take advantage, or allow yourself to be taken advantage of, the weak situation in which you find yourself.added the lawyer, castigating the behavior “thug” of the “stadium gods” outside the field.
The trial, which will open at 2 p.m., was initially scheduled to be held in June, behind closed doors, but was postponed in the absence of a defendant, the Irishman Denis Coulson, injured in a serious car accident a few days earlier. The defendants risk up to twenty years of criminal imprisonment.
Several cases of sexual assault have tarnished the image of French rugby in recent months. A Fijian player from Dax (Landes, Pro D2) was sentenced on November 22 to a one-year suspended prison sentence for sexual assault and violence during a heavily alcoholic evening. Above all, internationals Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou were charged with aggravated rape during a tour of Argentina in July. While awaiting the decision on a possible dismissal, which is under deliberation, the two players returned to the field. The three main defendants in the Bordeaux trial had left Grenoble after their indictment in 2017, but had continued their careers in other clubs.
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