The decision, deliberated at the end of November, by judge Eleonora Arenas must be rendered during a closed hearing, scheduled from 9 a.m. local time (12 p.m. in France) at the Mendoza judicial center. Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, 21, are charged with aggravated rape in a meeting: alleged events that occurred on the night of July 6 to 7 in a hotel in Mendoza, where the French XV had just played a match against Argentina .
An expected decision, but not final
The two young men have maintained from the beginning that the sexual relations with the complainant, a 39-year-old Argentinian they met in a nightclub, were consensual, and without violence. The complainant’s lawyer, however, denounced a rape with ” violence terrible », in a case which saw two radically opposed versions of the facts clash, apart from a convergence on the reality of sexual acts in the bedroom, and an alcoholic context.
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The judge’s decision, however, may not be final. Both the plaintiff’s defense and that of the players have the possibility of appealing, whether the dismissal is pronounced or rejected, which would refer the case to another authority, a judicial source reminds AFP. The players’ lawyers, like their accuser’s lawyer, declined requests to speak on Monday, on the eve of the deliberations. The players’ defense simply reiterated its optimism about the outcome of the procedure. Two weeks ago, Judge Arenas heard the arguments for and against the dismissal of the case, during hearings spread over two half-days.
Tensions between lawyers
The prosecution had argued in favor of dropping the charges, as it announced at the beginning of October at the end of the investigation. Early in the case, notably in mid-August when deciding to release the two players, he noted “ notable contradictions, inconsistencies, gray areas » in the complainant’s account.
Then the players’ lawyers also pleaded for a dismissal of the case, which they have been demanding since August. For them “ everything has been said » in a folder where “ the crime did not exist “, because of ” the existence of consent “. And this case is that of a “ scandalous denunciation […] with financial aims » compensation.
Pleading after them, Natacha Romano, the plaintiff’s lawyer, asked “ total rejection » of the dismissal of the case and demanded that the investigation continue, from his point of view with a new prosecutor. She had, moreover, deplored an audience spent “ accuse a victim of lying “, instead ” to evaluate what happened between (the) four walls » from the hotel room that night. Me Romano, on several occasions, accused the provincial justice of Mendoza of “ partiality », and had tried to challenge the two prosecutors in charge of the investigation, then Judge Arenas.
These steps, as well as several successive procedural appeals, raised the tone between Argentine lawyers, with crossed threats of subsequent complaints and demands for damages. Jegou and Auradou, for their part, have resumed professional rugby in France: since October for Auradou with Pau, in November for Jegou with La Rochelle.
They returned to France at the beginning of September, after the green light from the Argentine courts, which then considered that “ the initial accusation (had) lost its force “. At the start of the affair, they had spent more than a week in preventive detention, then almost a month under house arrest.
