While a dismissal hearing will take place on October 18 in Mendoza (Argentina), a new element was officially added this Wednesday to the file of the Hugo Auradou-Oscar Jegou affair.
This is, according to our information, a medical certificate established on October 3 by a hematologist indicating that the woman accusing the two French rugby players of aggravated gang rape “does not suffer from Willebrand disease”, a syndrome which hampers blood clotting.
In a fourteen-page document presented to the Mendoza Public Prosecutor’s Office – to which we had access – the lawyers of the alleged victim qualify this new document as “highly valuable evidence” and call for a continuation of the judicial investigation. “The audience (dropping charges) will take place,” confirms Darío Nora, the magistrate in charge of the investigation.
The dismissal described as “premature”
According to the prosecution’s lawyers, “the prosecutor and his superiors justify the fifteen lesions” noted on their client’s body on the day she filed the complaint by this illness. The prosecution, add the counsel, “suffered from a kind of procedural fraud on the part of the defense, which, (…) through an innumerable number of public statements, maintained that the plaintiff was currently suffering from an illness , without a medical examination to demonstrate it.”
Consequently, Natacha Romano and Mauricio Cardello, the two representatives of the alleged victim, announce their “formal opposition” to the dismissal required by the public prosecutor, described on several occasions as “hasty” and “premature”.
The complainant herself admitted the existence of this disease
Interviewed at length by the prosecutor on August 6, the complainant herself admitted suffering from “Von Willebrand disease” (“grade 1, the mildest”), diagnosed, she said, “twelve years ago” , at the time of her “first pregnancy”. According to a hematologist who testified on September 19 before the prosecution, the alleged victim – whom she took care of on May 23, 2024 – actually suffered from this syndrome during their appointment, which she had “not noticed clinically” but had observed in his medical file.
This pathology, explains the specialist, “is characterized by bleeding, mainly mucosal and cutaneous”, and the spontaneous appearance of “light hematomas on the skin” – due to a “minor blow” for example – but “not ‘abrasions’.
VideoAuradou and Jegou, the French rugby players charged with rape in Argentina, expected in France this Wednesday
Questioned by Le Parisien – Today in France in mid-September, Antoine Vey, who represents the rugby players, also mentioned the existence of a “disease which prevents (the complainant) to coagulate normally and can therefore create bruises” while indicating that this pathology “does not explain all the marks” identified in the medico-legal report. “What she attributed these marks to (several rapes accompanied by blows, bites, scratches, strangulation and kidnapping) is medically contradicted,” he added.
New expertise requested
Alongside the provision of this new evidence, Natacha Romano and Mauricio Cardello also underline “the need” to complete the psychological and psychiatric assessments carried out on their client, denouncing “the significant mistreatment” of which she was allegedly the victim during exams.
On September 24, the results of these tests were included in the file, highlighting “contradictions” in the story of the alleged victim, deemed “implausible and not credible”. A second report, drawn up by a prosecution expert and validated two days later, considers on the contrary that “the repeated accounts of the facts experienced (by this) are credible.”
Referring to “procedural irregularities”, the plaintiff’s advice also requests various measures: a deepening of the psychological and psychiatric expertise carried out on Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, a new examination of the medico-legal report by an experienced specialist as well as the organization of additional testimonial statements. Contacted, Rafael Cúneo Libarona, the lawyer for the two players, did not wish to comment.
Free but still indicted for aggravated gang rape, the two 21-year-old rugby players returned to France on September 4, 58 days after being arrested and then questioned by the police in Buenos Aires, following the filing of a complaint ‘a 39 year old woman.
The facts with which they are accused allegedly took place on the night of July 6 to 7 in a hotel in Mendoza, in the center-west of Argentina, following a test match won by the XV of France against the Pumas (28-13). The second line of Pau and the third line of La Rochelle have proclaimed their innocence since the start of this affair. They acknowledge a consensual sexual relationship with the alleged victim but categorically deny any form of violence.
