the essential
Five Rugby players will appear before the Gironde Assize Court this Monday. These former players of the Grenoble team are accused of gang rape, for three of them, and of failure to prevent a crime, for the two others who allegedly witnessed the events without intervening.
Who are the accused?
Five rugby players, all Grenoble players at the time of the acts with which they are accused, will be in the dock. The 30-year-old Irish pillar, Denis Coulson, the New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, and the Frenchman Loïck Jammes, 30, will appear until December 13 for gang rape. Alongside them, Irishman Chris Farrell, 31, and New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 40, are answering charges of failure to prevent a crime.
What are the alleged facts?
On March 12, 2017, the day after a Top 14 match lost by Grenoblois against Union Bordeaux-Bègles, a young woman left, in tears, a hotel located in Mérignac, on the outskirts of Bordeaux. In the process, she filed a complaint. She explains that she met the Grenoble players in a bar with two friends. She decides to follow them to a nightclub where she, like them, consumes a lot of alcohol. That's when his memories fade.
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She comes to her senses once she arrives in a hotel room and realizes that a crutch has been inserted into her vagina. She is surrounded by two naked men and several others, dressed. Also mentioned are the introduction of a banana and a bottle into her vagina, as well as fellatio. Coulson, Jammes and Grice admitted to having had sexual relations with the young woman but claim that she consented, even taking the initiative. Farrell, who owned the crutches, was in the room, along with Hayes, who also witnessed the incident.
Why is the trial taking place so late?
The trial will begin this Monday, December 2 before the Gironde Assize Court. Initially, it was supposed to open in June. One of the accused, Denis Coulson, had been seriously injured in a car accident a few days earlier. His inability to attend the trial had forced the postponement. “He is still quite weak, he has lost a lot of weight but he is quite courageous and he will be there,” his lawyer, Maître Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, told AFP. The trial will be based on the hearings of the accused, witnesses as well as a sex tape, filmed by Denis Coulson. The victim had requested that it be held behind closed doors in June.
What are the two sides saying?
“Perhaps this young girl did not want what happened but her behavior did not suggest to these boys, at least to my client, that she did not agree,” believes the Coulson's lawyer. “When we go to a nightclub and drink a lot, it's not to make small talk. We want to have relationships with boys. She was very active, she kissed him in a nightclub , gives him oral sex in the taxi, she sends him signs saying: I’m up for it,” she continues.
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The victim was extremely drunk. According to a toxicological expert, she had between 2.2 and 3 grams of alcohol per liter of blood. On video surveillance images, she had difficulty standing when she arrived at the hotel, to the point of being “constantly held down” by a player, the accusation notes.
“No one is required to be perfect from getting up to going to bed. It is not because (alcoholism) is their own doing that allows (others) to do anything and everything with their body” , notes the young woman's lawyer, Maître Anne Cadiot-Feidt. “The obligation, when we detect a risky situation in a person, is to protect them. Without transforming into a superhero, we can call a taxi and not take advantage, or let them take advantage, of the situation of weakness in which she finds herself,” she adds.
