Five rugby players were sentenced to trial today for the alleged gang rape of a young lady in France, including two Irishmen.
According to court authorities, Denis Coulson, 28, Loick Jammes, 27, and Rory Grice, 32, are all suspected of participating in the sex assault.
They were first charged in June 2019, and the Appeals Court in Bordeaux, South West France, has now dismissed an appeal against that judgment.
Along with Dylan Hayes, 28, from New Zealand, Chris Farrell, 29, who is also Irish, is charged with “failure to prevent the crime.”
When the gang rape allegedly took place on March 12, 2017, at a hotel in Merignac, a neighborhood of Bordeaux where the city airport is located, all five were colleagues playing for FC Grenoble in eastern France.
The five now have until September 29 to file a second appeal with France’s highest appeals court, Cassation.
Their attorneys are anticipated to contend that due process has been disregarded and that a fair trial would not be provided.
According to the source, “Mr. Farrell and Mr. Hayes failed to prevent the crime perpetrated in Bordeaux on March 12th, 2017,” and the Appeals Court “found sufficient evidence that they should be prosecuted and brought before the Assizes court.”
The maximum sentence for failing to stop a crime is five years in jail, while the three males accused of participating in a gang rape face up to twenty years in prison.
Coulson, who once represented Connacht in Ireland, called it quits on his playing career in 2020 in Carcassonne in South-West France.
When he was accused, Farrell was playing for Munster, but his career has been put on hold while the legal process is ongoing.
They said that their victim was a student from France, age 21, who cannot be identified for legal reasons.
She allegedly met the athletes at a bar after their team’s match against Union Bordeaux-Bègles.
According to court testimony, she afterwards went with the five males to a disco in Bordeaux where everyone was observed to be imbibing excessively.
Around 4 am, the lady drove the Grenoble players to their hotel, where the group was seen on surveillance footage seeming to be highly inebriated.
According to French authorities, Coulson is accused of filming the lady engaging in sex activities on his cell phone.
She then admitted to being raped to a taxi driver. There were a number of them,” she said, before complaining to Bordeaux police a short while later.
The woman’s initial testimony to police, according to Loick Jammes’ attorney Denis Dreyfus, described “consensual intercourse.”
The woman’s defense team, however, claims that the Appeals Court verdict “clearly indicates” that “there could not have been consent.”