The trial of three former Grenoble Rugby players accused of “gang rape” after a dismal “third half”

Charlotte, a 20-year-old student at Sciences Po, was so drunk when she left the Bordeaux nightclub shortly after 4 a.m. on March 12, 2017, that she staggered and didn't “did not realize anything”told her friend Manon (both first names have been changed) to investigators. THE « garçons »all professional Rugby players at FC Grenoble Rugby – met a few hours earlier in a pub – had also “quite a bit drunk”but they were “kind and quiet”. Enough for Manon to let Charlotte go by taxi with two of them to the hotel in Mérignac (Gironde) where their team was spending the night after a crushing defeat (46-14) against Union Bordeaux-Bègles, during a Top 14 match.

Shortly before 7:30 a.m. that day, Charlotte woke up in an unfamiliar room, naked on a bed, a crutch in her vagina, surrounded by two men, also naked, with erections, and three others, dressed. She has no memory of leaving the nightclub that night. One of them orders her to perform fellatio, which she does.

Regaining her senses and her clothes, she flees the room and, in the grip of an anxiety attack, collapses in tears in front of the receptionist. Her sobs, in the parking lot where she is waiting for a taxi, wake up a couple of customers who live on the third floor. To the driver of the vehicle, she declared « They raped me, there were several of them »and filed a complaint the same day.

Debates behind closed doors

Almost eight years later, after having exhausted all avenues of appeal, the five rugby players, aged 22 to 26 at the time of the alleged facts, are preparing to meet Charlotte before the Gironde Assize Court. From Monday 2 to Friday 13 December, the former Irish U20 international Denis Coulson, converted to construction, the New Zealander Rory Grice and the Frenchman Loïck Jammes, respectively licensed in Pro D2 in Oyonnax (Ain) and Aix-en- Provence (Bouches-du-Rhône), will answer for “meet rape”. They face a maximum sentence of twenty years of criminal imprisonment.

Spectators of all or part of the scenes which they refrained from ending, the Irishman Christopher Farrell, who currently plays center for Oyonnax (Pro D2), and the New Zealander Dylan Hayes, retired from the club since February de Valence-Romans (Pro D2), will appear alongside them for “failure to prevent a crime”: an offense punishable by a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

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