Five former players for leading French rugby team Grenoble will stand trial from Monday over allegations that three of them gang-raped a student after a 2017 match.
The trial in southwestern city Bordeaux, scene of the suspected rape, will turn on whether the young woman, now 27, was too drunk to consent to s*x.
“What is consent? At what point is it diminished or even totally absent?” one of her lawyers, Anne Cadiot-Feidt, told AFP.
Named only as V., the plaintiff has opted for anonymity to protect her personal and professional lives, her lawyers say.
Irishman Denis Coulson, 30, New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, and French 29-year-old Loick Jammes are accused of raping the plaintiff.
Two fellow players, 31-year-old Irishman Chris Farrell — a member of Ireland’s Grand Slam-winning 2018 Six Nations squad — and New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 30, are being tried for failing to prevent a crime.
V. and two friends encountered the rugby players in a Bordeaux bar after the Grenoble team played a Top 14 championship match on March 11, 2017 – a few months before the #MeToo movement was sparked in the United States.
The group guzzled cocktails including mojitos and Vodka-Red Bull as they moved on to a nightclub.
10 times the limit
V. said she remembered nothing about how the night ended after leaving the nightclub.
She boarded a taxi headed for the players’ hotel with Coulson around 4:00 am.
A toxicologist’s report found that V. had between 2.2 and 3.0 grams of alcohol per litre of blood at that point — well over 10 times the maximum allowed when driving in France.
Surveillance footage from her arrival at the hotel shows her struggling to stand as Coulson supports her. He also appears to twice prevent her from re-boarding the taxi.
V. said she woke up naked on a bed with a crutch in her vagina at around 7:00 am alongside two naked men and others still wearing clothes.
Source: IOL