Is Girondin Rugby taking the fight against sexual violence head on?

Subscribers edition, Investigation

This Friday, November 22, a few days before the day of the fight against gender violence, the Blues face the Pumas on the pitch of the Stade de France. Their last meeting ended in defeat for Fabien Galthié's men who still emerged from their tour of Argentina victorious. But without glory: if many uninitiated people have heard of this visit to Latin America, it is certainly not for the sporting prowess of the XV of France.
First there was Melvyn Jaminet (RC Toulon) who, visibly tipsy, declared in a video published by mistake on Instagram that he wanted to give a “helmet hit” to the first Arab he was going to come across. Then it was the turn of Oscar Jegou (Stade Rochelais) and Hugo Auradou (Section Paloise). The two internationals were arrested the day after the first test in Mendoza, on July 6, following a complaint of rape filed by a woman whom the young players had met at a club and brought back to the hotel.
These two cases perhaps had only one merit: to relaunch the debate on the excesses of the third half and the virilist culture which seems to govern this discipline.

A real before/after?

We know that the world of sport in general is not exempt from abuses of all kinds. And even if he is not the only one, rugby is not a model student either. “There will of course be a before and after-Mendoza,” Florian Grill, president of the French Rugby Federation (FFR), promised this summer. But when things pile up, can we really talk about a before and after?
Wasn't there already a need for an “after” when a complaint was filed in March 2017 by a young woman who accused three Grenoble players of having raped her in a hotel in Mérignac? Following the rape complaints targeting Josaia Raisuqe (Castres Olympique) in 2017 or Baptiste Lafond (Stade Niçois Rugby) in 2023? Or when the case of a probable rape committed in a meeting after a match in Vannes by Espoirs from Bourg-en-Bresse was revealed in L'Equipe last June?
As for the former Grenoble players, Denis Coulson (retired), Loïck Jammes (Provence Rugby), Rory Grice (Oyonnax) will be judged from December 2 to 13 in Bordeaux. Chris Farrell (Oyonnax) and Dylan Hayes (retired) will also appear for failure to prevent a crime.

OvalieTM Values

Lessons do not seem to have been learned. In l'Humanité, Maître Cadiot-Feidt, one of the four counsel for the victim of the latter, recognized that there was “still much to do” for real awareness to take place. THE According to her, the “#MeToo phenomenon” had perhaps not yet “penetrated certain sporting activities, their organization and their mode of operation”.
At the end of July, we wondered at France Info about the “marketing of Ovalie values” – to use the words of researcher Carole Gomez. Rugby, this “thug sport played by gentlemen”, would be a “prone ground for sexual violence”, headlines the media. If there is only one step between saying it and recognizing it, not everyone chooses to take it.
The Gironde Departmental Committee (CD33) has in any case put the subject on the program. This entity, which oversees all the rugby schools in the department, formalized on June 1, 2024 a partnership with the Departmental Olympic and Sports Committee (CDOS). This translates into communication and prevention actions around all types of violence encountered in the practice of sport, on the sidelines of the pitch or in the locker rooms.