Ireland international Denis Coulson is on trial along with four other rugby stars for gang-raping a student – ​​as court hears graphic details of items ‘used to abuse victim’

Irish international Denis Coulson was today tried in France along with four other rugby players over the alleged gang rape of a student.

The trial, held in the southwestern French city of Bordeaux, was originally scheduled for June but was postponed after Coulson was seriously injured in a road accident.

Coulson is “still weak” but will be present at the trial, said his lawyer, Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt.

The former prop, 30, is accused of gang rape, as are New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, and Frenchman Loick Jammes, 30.

Irish national Chris Farrell, 31, and New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 40, are charged with failing to prevent an offence.

In the small hours of March 12, 2017, the student, identified only as V., was in tears as she left a hotel on the outskirts of Bordeaux, where the Grenoble team (FCG) was spending the night after losing a Top 14 match against local team UBB.

The then 20-year-old filed a complaint with the police, saying she met the players at a bar with two friends and accompanied them to a nightclub where everyone had a lot to drink.

The student said she could not remember how she got from the club to the hotel where she woke up, naked on a bed and with a crutch in her vagina.

She saw two naked men in the room and others fully clothed.

Coulson, Jammes and Grice stated that they had sexual relations with V., but claimed that the encounter was consensual and that the student had been proactive in initiating it.

Farrell, the owner of the stool, was present, as was Hayes.

“Maybe this girl didn’t want what was happening, but her behavior didn’t give these boys, at least my client, the impression that she didn’t agree with it,” Dreyfus-Schmidt said.

“If you go to a nightclub and drink a lot, it is not to exchange sweet nothings, but to have relationships with boys,” the lawyer said.

‘She was very active. She kissed him (Coulson) in the club, performed fellatio on him in the taxi and indicated she was wild.”

V.’s lawyer, Anne Cadiot-Feidt, rejected the argument, saying the players had behaved “like criminals.”

Based on statements from the suspect and witnesses, as well as a sex tape recorded by Coulson, investigators have concluded that multiple instances of fellatio occurred and that a banana, a bottle and crutches were inserted into V.’s vagina.

A toxicology report stated that her blood alcohol level was between 2.2 and 3 grams, a level considered in the danger zone for alcohol poisoning.

CCTV footage showed her having difficulty getting up when she arrived at the hotel and being supported by a player.

Cadiot-Feidt rejected the players’ version, saying of her client V.: “No one can be expected to be perfect all the time.”

While the decision to drink as much as she did was her client’s, it didn’t give anyone the right to “do whatever they want with her body,” she said.

The players, she said, had a duty to “protect” the woman.

“You don’t have to be a superhero, but you can call a taxi without exploiting, or allowing others to exploit, the state of weakness she was in,” the lawyer said.

The three main defendants left Grenoble in 2017 after the allegations emerged, to continue their careers at other clubs.

Allegations of rape have shocked the world of international rugby in recent times.

The French trial comes just over a week before an Argentine judge is due to decide whether to dismiss charges against two French international rugby players accused of raping a woman after a match in the South American country.

Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, both 21 years old, were held in Argentina for weeks after the alleged attack in July.

And last month, a Fijian player at French southwestern club Dax was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison sentence for assault and violence during a booze-fueled evening.