two versions and one in camera

They arrive separately, flanked by their lawyers, and ignore the journalists from the thirty or so accredited media outlets. Since Monday, December 2 and until Friday, December 13, five former FC Grenoble (FCG) rugby players aged 30 to 33 have been tried before the Gironde Assize Court, in Bordeaux, in a case of alleged rape committed on a 20-year-old student during a party after a match between Union Bordeaux-Bègles (UBB) and FCG, in March 2017.

There is no one absent. Walking on crutches – scars from the car accident he had in June, which led to a postponement of the trial – the Irishman Denis Coulson is there. “During his convalescence, he had only one goal: to be present and answer for the acts that he is accused of and that he contests,” explains his lawyer, M^e Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt. With the Frenchman Loïck Jammes and the New Zealander Rory Grice, Denis Coulson is accused of “gang rape”, punishable by twenty years in prison. The Irishman Chris Farrell and the New Zealander Dylan Hayes are being prosecuted for the offense of “failure to prevent this crime” and risk up to five years of imprisonment.

Defense attacks

The debates, which promise to be lively, will not be public. At the request of the civil party, a young woman now aged 27, the closed session was ordered. Not without a reaction from the defense, several of whose lawyers questioned before the court “the coherence of this request in view of the media coverage which has been given to this case”.

“This request is consistent with what a young woman may feel when extremely traumatic events of which she was the victim almost eight years ago are brought up. The closed session is as much linked to itself as to society. It becomes an intimate affair again,” specifies, outside the courtroom, M^e Anne Cadiot-Feidt, one of the young woman's four lawyers.

For two weeks, two versions will oppose each other before the court chaired by Marie-Noëlle Billaud and the popular jury, made up of four men and two women. On the one hand, that of the accused. The three principals admitted to having had sexual relations with the civil party, whom they met in a pub after the match.

“For them, she was consenting to the extent that she actively participated in all the sexual relations that took place that evening,” attacks, during a suspension, M^e Dreyfus-Schmidt, referring to a video filmed during the incident by players and pointing out “an ambiguity” in the young woman.

On the other hand, the version of the civil party. From the beginning, she has maintained that she has no memory between the moment when she left a nightclub in a state of pronounced intoxication and the moment when she woke up naked, in a hotel, among rugby players. “There was no consent and there was not even the possibility of consent given the condition of my client”, replies in the room of the lost steps M^e Cadiot Feud.

Until Tuesday evening, the court and the jurors are looking into the personalities of the accused. Before starting to examine the facts from Wednesday.