They were sentenced at first instance to twelve and fourteen years in prison. Three former Grenoble rugby players will be tried behind closed doors from Wednesday before the Angoulême Court of Appeal for the rape of a student after a Top 14 match in Bordeaux in 2017.
In December 2024, almost eight years after the events, the Frenchman Loïck Jammes and the Irishman Denis Coulson were sentenced to fourteen years in prison, and the New Zealander Rory Grice, to twelve years, for “gang rape”. Two other teammates, who had witnessed the scene without intervening, the Irishman Chris Farrell and the New Zealander Dylan Hayes, did not appeal their conviction at first instance – four years in prison, two of which were suspended, for the first, two years suspended, for the second.
She wakes up naked with a crutch in her vagina
On March 12, 2017, in the morning, the victim, then aged 20, left in tears a hotel in Mérignac, near Bordeaux, where the Grenoblois were staying after their defeat against Union Bordeaux-Bègles. In her complaint, the student, who has since become a magistrate, declared having followed rugby players in a nightclub during a very alcoholic evening, without remembering what happened next. She added that she woke up the next day, naked on a bed with a crutch inserted into her vagina, surrounded by two naked men and others dressed.
“Nine years after the events”, the victim “has still not mourned what happened”, declared Me Grégoire Mouly, one of his lawyers, who, as in the first trial, demanded that the proceedings be held behind closed doors.
A “dissociative” state, “acts of torture”
During the investigation, as in the first instance, the three rugby players assured that the young woman was consenting and taking initiatives, relying on a video shot by one of them. “They couldn’t perceive that she wasn’t consenting. They were all drunk and never forced her to do anything, that’s the difficulty of the case,” Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, lawyer for Denis Coulson, explained to AFP, for whom the sentence handed down in 2024 is “unreasonable and excessive” against “a boy who is not dangerous”.
For the civil parties, the video submitted by the defense on the contrary shows the victim “in a dissociative state, on autopilot, according to psychiatric experts”, and the introduction of objects into her – a banana and a bottle of water – “can almost be compared to acts of torture” and confirms the gang rape, declared Me Gaessy Gros.
The debates are scheduled to last until April 3.
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