Ratu Nacika sentenced to 12 months in prison

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It was during an immediate appearance that the judge was Ratu Nacikathis Thursday, November 21, within the Dax judicial court. The Fijian rugby player, third row of the USD, was sentenced to 12 months in prison with simple suspended sentence. He was found guilty of “sexual assault, violence and damage to property while clearly intoxicated”.

On the evening of November 3, 2024, he sexually assaulted two waitresses in drinking establishments in the spa town, with the aggravating circumstance of being heavily intoxicated. He was also found guilty of hitting a man, an employee of one of the two bars.

“Totally out of control”

The accused, wearing a sky blue shirt and dark pants, arrived in the courtroom accompanied by an English translator. A few meters away, on another bench, three complainants, including two women, waitresses in spa town bars, who accuse Ratu Nacika of sexual assaults accompanied by verbal violence. A third person, a man, is present as a civil party for having received a blow to the head.

The chair of the session, Elisa Wegbecher, first described the progress of the police investigation. It appears that the player, along with his teammate Jope Naseara (he will be tried in May 2025 for violence), were “totally out of control” during this evening. According to the investigation, they both consumed around ten beers in the afternoon of Saturday November 3, 2024, during the birthday of another teammate’s daughter, before going to the city center from Dax.

Acute stress

It is then that the evening degenerates. The two men drink “rum and Coke” and shooters, the atmospherethe accused no longer remembers the number, just like the rest of the evening, he repeats several times on the stand.

Then comes the episode of Rocket. A young woman, in her twenties, a waitress, saw the tall man, 1m97 and 120kg, touch her buttocks then her left breast, she relates in the report. The victim suffers the after-effects of this scene, she speaks in particular of the “hate” that she saw in his eyes. In the melee, he also attacked a man, striking him with an open hand and from behind, in the jaw.

Finally in the “Chez Sophie” establishment, Ratu Nacika, heavily intoxicated, surrounded a waitress, “with her pelvis forward against her buttocks, a gesture with sexual connotations”. He returns to the same bar a few minutes later, shouts including insults: “Fuck you”. A hospital report will point to a state of acute stress, sleep disorders, loss of appetite in the young woman. She has not returned to work since. “An act that touched me, disturbed me,” she says in a small voice to the audience.

“Bottle-fed with porn, in a patriarchal world”

When he takes the floor to talk about this evening, the accused asks for forgiveness, apologizes, does not remember. He said, “If that is what perhaps happened as you say, then I apologize.” He will not give any further explanations for his actions. The psychiatrist who received him did not identify any sexual pathology and concluded that the accused’s deep state of alcohol at the time of the events had “impaired his discernment”.

Come the words of the victims’ lawyers, including Maître Laforêt: “You don’t touch a woman alone in a bar, thanks to people like my client, people like him can have fun on Saturday evenings. She came to the hearing, I had to insist that she be visible.” Her colleague speaks of a character “fed on porn in a patriarchal world”.

Absence of witness

Faced with the victims’ lawyers, Maître Brethoux, who defends Ratu Nacika, pleads for release. She asks for “sovereign justice” which only judges the facts, in other words “doubt must apply to my client”. She denounces in turn the absence of witnesses, surveillance videos which show nothing, no photos, no observations of injuries. She also mentions “the search for sexual connotation which is not established”.

In her indictments, the prosecutor, Anne Kayanakis, requests fifteen months in prison with suspended probation. The judges finally sentenced him to 12 months in prison, suspended, and banned from appearing in the two bars for three years or from having contact with the victims during this same period.

In addition, his name will be entered in the automated judicial file of perpetrators of sexual or violent offenses. The inadmissibility was ruled out on the grounds that the person concerned is “well integrated professionally” recalls the president. Finally, he will have to pay 1000 euros to the two young women for legal costs and a symbolic euro to one of them. The attacked man will receive 300 euros for moral damage. The Fijian has 10 days to appeal.

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