Sentences of 12 to 14 years’ imprisonment were requested this Thursday against three former Grenoble rugby players tried in Bordeaux for the rape of a young woman in 2017 after a Top 14 match. The Attorney General demanded 14 years for the Irishman Denis Coulson and the Frenchman Loïck Jammes, 12 years for the New Zealander Rory Grice, while the facts of gang rape are punishable by 20 years in prison.
All plead the consent of the victim, aged 20 at the time of the events. On March 12, 2017, she left in tears a hotel in Mérignac, on the outskirts of Bordeaux, where the Grenoble team had spent the night after a Top 14 match lost against Union Bordeaux-Bègles.
Facts which allegedly occurred after an alcoholic evening
She had filed a complaint, declaring that she had met players from Grenoble in a bar and followed them to a nightclub, where alcohol had flowed freely, without remembering what happened next. She woke up the next morning, naked on a bed with a crutch in her vagina, surrounded by two naked men and others dressed.
A sentence of four years in prison was requested against the Irishman Chris Farrell (31 years old), tried for “failure to prevent a crime” alongside the New Zealander Dylan Hayes (40 years old), for which the attorney general requested two years, one of which was suspended. The courts accuse them of having witnessed all or part of the alleged rape without intervening.
