Five rugby players including two Irishmen go on trial over gang-rape of 21-year-old student at French hotel in 2017

Two Irishmen are among five rugby players to appear in French court today in connection with the gang rape of a student.

Denis Coulson, a 30-year-old Dubliner, is alleged to have taken part in the sex attack on the then 21-year-old student, along with Frenchman Loick Jammes, 29, and New Zealander Rory Grice, 34.

Chris Farrell, 31 – winner of the Six Nations Championship with Ireland in 2018 – and Dylan Hayes, 30, of New Zealand, are charged with ‘failure to prevent crime’.

The men will appear at the Bordeaux assizes on Monday afternoon for a ten-day trial.

All five were teammates playing for FC Grenoble Rugby, in eastern France, when the gang rape is alleged to have occurred at a hotel in Mérignac, a suburb of Bordeaux where the city’s airport is located, on March 12, 2017.

The defendants deny any wrongdoing and claim the woman involved – who cannot be named for legal reasons – agreed to have sex with three of them while they were all extremely drunk.

New Zealander Rory Grice is accused of rape

Frenchman Loick Jammes is also accused of raping the student

The trial in the southwestern city of Bordeaux, the scene of the suspected rape, will question whether the young woman, now 27, was too drunk to consent to sex.

The now 27-year-old accuser, identified only as V., has chosen anonymity to protect her personal and professional life, her lawyers say.

The alleged victim is said to have met the players at a pub after their team played a match against Union Bordeaux-Bègles, before accompanying the five men to a disco where they all drank heavily, according to evidence previously rehearsed in court .

The woman then went with the Grenoble players to their hotel at around 4am, where the party was caught on CCTV looking very drunk and barely able to get up.

Coulson allegedly recorded a video on his cell phone of the woman performing sexual acts, French prosecutors allege.

Surveillance footage of her arrival at the hotel shows her struggling to get up as Coulson supports her.

He also appears to prevent her from getting back into the taxi twice.

The victim later told another taxi driver: ‘I was raped. There were several before they filed a complaint with the Bordeaux police a few hours later.

V. told the magistrates that several objects, including a banana, a bottle and a stool, had been inserted into her vagina by the men.

V. claimed that she woke up naked on a bed around 7 a.m. with a crutch in her vagina, next to two naked men and others still wearing clothes.

The victim’s lawyer, Anne Cadiot-Feidt, said arguments at trial would likely focus on “the issue of the victim’s responsibility in a situation where she voluntarily placed herself in a state that limits or eliminates consent.” .

“We often ask questions about the victim’s consent and not at all about how attackers assess their consent,” she added.

‘What is consent? At what point is it reduced or even completely absent?’.

Meanwhile, Denis Coulson’s lawyer Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt said before going to court: ‘This is not the trial of rugby players who are rapists, it is the trial of alcohol.

“All these young people drinking until they’re in an impossible state – that’s the problem in this case.”

Chris Farrell, 31 – winner of the Six Nations Championship with Ireland in 2018 – is accused of ‘failing to prevent crime’

Dylan Hayes allegedly did nothing to prevent the attack

V. said that after leaving the nightclub, she had no memory of how the night ended.

A toxicologist’s report showed that V. had between 2.2 and 3.0 grams of alcohol per liter of blood at the time – more than ten times the maximum driving limit in France.

Testimony from the defendants and witnesses, as well as a video that Coulson filmed during a sex act, suggest that the group engaged in oral sex with V. and penetrated her with objects, including crutches.

Coulson, Jammes and Grice have all acknowledged engaging in sexual acts with V., but insist it was consensual.

Cadiot-Feidt claimed there is a ‘high degree of tolerance’ among some French rugby clubs and supporters towards alcohol-induced incidents.

“A lot of people still think the woman just shouldn’t have gone out, just shouldn’t have had anything to drink, and shouldn’t have put herself in that situation,” she said.

All five players continued their professional careers after being arrested and subsequently released on bail, but two of them – Coulson and Hayes – have since retired.