Rape in Argentina: The judge deliberates the fate of the Rugby players

The decision on a possible dismissal of the case for Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, the two French rugby players charged with aggravated rape in Argentina, was put under advisement on Tuesday, without a date being communicated for the decision, announced the lawyer players.

“The judge will decide the result, and will take (the) few days necessary. It’s a complicated case,” Rafael Cuneo Libarona, the players’ lawyer, told journalists after a second day of hearing behind closed doors at the judicial center of Mendoza (west).

Judge Eleonora Arenas “did not say” how long she would take to render her decision, he said. “She has to analyze everything so she takes her time.”

“Convinced of its truth”

After the presentations on Monday by the prosecution, which requested the dismissal of the case, that is to say the abandonment of the proceedings against the players, then their lawyers, it was Natacha Romano, the plaintiff’s lawyer, a 39-year-old Argentinian, who pleaded Tuesday.

“We requested the total rejection (of the dismissal), arguing above all that there is proof of production (of the crime), and that we must continue to investigate,” Mr. Romano declared to the press at the outcome of the hearing.

Her client “wished to be present (at the hearing) but her state of health did not allow it,” she added. But she remains “convinced of its truth”.

Me Cuneo Libarona, for his part, estimated that the players’ defense had, “step by step, demonstrated the innocence” of Auradou and Jegou. “This offense did not exist, we have no doubt,” he insisted, because of “the existence of consent”.

Two radically opposed versions

For almost five months, Auradou and Jegou, 21 years old, have remained charged with aggravated rape because they were committed in a meeting, for alleged acts that occurred on the night of July 6 to 7 in a hotel in Mendoza, where the XV of France had just played a test match against Argentina, followed by a “third half”.

Both have affirmed from the beginning that the sexual relations with the complainant, met in a nightclub, were consensual and without violence.

The plaintiff’s lawyer, on the other hand, denounced a rape with “terrible violence”, in a case which saw two radically opposed versions of the facts clash, apart from a convergence on the reality of sexual acts and an alcoholic context.

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