The trial of five Grenoble rugby players, accused of gang rape in 2017, opened on December 2 at the Bordeaux Assize Court. After a week of hearing, this Monday, December 9, the victim finally took the stand to explain the facts.
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For a week, the 28-year-old young woman had been waiting to take the stand. She was able to do so, behind closed doors, this Monday, December 9, before the Bordeaux Assize Court. The victim, a Bordeaux student aged 21 at the time of the events, accuses five rugby players from Grenoble of having raped and sexually assaulted her during a very alcoholic evening on March 11, 2017.
That evening, she went to a bar in Bordeaux with friends. The young woman meets the rugby players: the Irish Denis Coulson and Chris Farrell, the Frenchman Loïck Jammes and the New Zealanders Rory Grice and Dylan Hayes. She then decides to follow them to a nightclub, during a very alcoholic evening. What’s next? She doesn’t remember it because of her drunken state. At 7 a.m., she wakes up naked, surrounded by two naked men, also naked, and others still clothed.
As she left the hotel, she called her mother and a friend, in a state of shock. She filed a complaint, a few hours later, for rape: “She recounted, for four hours, in a very modest manner, what she had said from the beginning, from the first text messages she sent to her mother and her friend when she got out of the taxi. that is to say that she was attacked, that she was raped and that her first sensation was to have been penetrated by a long metal object, potentially a crutch”declares Gaessy Gros, one of the victim’s lawyers.
She was eager to speak because she had been attending this trial for a week without being able to speak.”
She also explained the choice of closed session: “It was humanly difficult for her to go through, it was difficult to imagine that there could be other people in the room who could see these very difficult videos and then see her life completely exposed for two weeks” , continued Me Gros.
According to his lawyer, “it was dignified, it was in proportion, it was not a relentless attack on the accused, there was no sensationalism. She was not there to make people cry. She just shared her story, explaining that what she expected from the trial is that we explain to the accused that they cannot do that.
Today, seven years after the events, it is no longer really his fate that matters, but potentially that of other victims.
The events which took place in the room were highlighted by a video, shot by Denis Coulson. Blowjobs were allegedly performed as well as the introduction of a banana, a bottle and crutches into the victim’s vagina. LThe five athletes claim to have had consensual sexual relations. The verdict is expected this Friday, December 13.
