Five former players from the prominent French rugby team Grenoble are set to stand trial starting Monday over allegations that three of them gang-raped a student after a match in 2017.
The trial, taking place in the southwestern city of Bordeaux where the suspected rape occurred, will focus on whether the young woman, now 27, was too intoxicated to consent to sex.
Anne Cadiot-Feidt, one of the plaintiff’s lawyers, raised questions about consent, asking, “What is consent? At what point is it diminished or even totally absent?”
The plaintiff, identified only as V., has chosen to remain anonymous to safeguard her personal and professional life.
The accused individuals include Irishman Denis Coulson, 30, New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, and Frenchman Loick Jammes, 29, who are charged with rape.
Additionally, two other players, 31-year-old Irishman Chris Farrell, a member of Ireland’s 2018 Six Nations Grand Slam-winning squad, and New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 30, are being tried for failure to prevent a crime.
The incident occurred after a Grenoble team Top 14 championship match on March 11, 2017, as V. and two friends encountered the rugby players at a Bordeaux bar. They consumed cocktails, including mojitos and Vodka-Red Bull, before proceeding to a nightclub. This event unfolded a few months before the emergence of the #MeToo movement in the United States.
10 times the limit
V. stated that she had no recollection of how the night concluded after leaving the nightclub. She reportedly boarded a taxi bound for the players’ hotel with Coulson around 4:00 am.
According to a toxicologist’s report, V. had between 2.2 and 3.0 grams of alcohol per liter of blood at that time—well over 10 times the maximum legal limit for driving in France.
Surveillance footage from her arrival at the hotel depicts her struggling to stand, with Coulson providing support. Additionally, he appears to have prevented her from re-entering the taxi on two occasions.
V. recounted waking up naked on a bed with a crutch inserted into her vagina around 7:00 am, alongside two naked men and others still clothed.
Lawyer Cadiot-Feidt suggested that arguments during the trial would likely focus on “the question of the victim’s responsibility in a situation where she voluntarily put herself in a state reducing or eliminating consent.”
She emphasized that the scrutiny often falls on the victim’s consent rather than the perpetrators’ assessment of it.
‘High level of tolerance’
Testimony from the defendants and witnesses, as well as a video Coulson filmed during a sex act, suggest the group engaged in oral sex with V. as well as penetrating her with objects including crutches.
Coulson, Jammes and Grice have all acknowledged engaging in sex acts with V., but insist they were consensual.
Jammes’s lawyer Denis Dreyfus said he too expected the hearings to turn on the difficulty of securing consent when “all parties are drunk”.
“What’s for sure is that it’s a tragedy for both sides,” he added.
“This isn’t the trial of rapist rugby players, it’s the trial of alcohol,” said Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, representing Coulson.
A “climate” around the #MeToo movement “was not favourable to understanding” in such cases, she added.
“All these young people drinking until they’re in an absolute state is the real problem in this case,” Dreyfus-Schmidt said.
Cadiot-Feidt charged that there is a “high level of tolerance” to alcohol-fuelled incidents among some French rugby clubs and supporters.
“A lot of people still think that the woman should just not have gone out, just shouldn’t have had anything to drink, just shouldn’t have put herself in that situation,” she said.
