Irish international rugby stars Denis Coulson and Chris Farrell, along with three other players, have gone on trial over an alleged gang rape of a student.
The trial, held in Bordeaux, France, was originally scheduled for June but was delayed after Mr Coulson was badly injured in a traffic accident.
Mr Coulson is ‘still weak’ but will be present at the trial, said his lawyer Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt. The former prop, 30, from Dublin, is accused of gang rape, as are New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, and Frenchman Loick Jammes, 30.
Denis Coulson. Pic: Romain Perrocheau/AFP via Getty Images
Tyrone native Chris Farrell, 31, who played for Munster, Ulster and Ireland, and New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 40, are charged with failure to prevent a crime.
In the small hours of March 12, 2017, the student, identified only as V, left a hotel in tears on the outskirts of Bordeaux, where the Grenoble team (FCG) spent the night after losing a Top 14 game against local team UBB.
The then 20-year-old filed a police complaint, saying she had met the players in a bar, together with two friends, and accompanied them to a nightclub where everybody had a lot to drink.
Chris Farrell. Pic: Romain Perrocheau/AFP via Getty Images
The student said she had no recollection of how she got from the club to the hotel, where she woke up, naked on a bed with a crutch inserted in her vagina.
She said she saw two naked men in the room and others who were fully dressed.
Mr Coulson, Mr Jammes and Mr Grice stated that they had sexual relations with V but claimed the encounter was consensual and the student had been proactive in bringing it about. Mr Farrell, the owner of the crutch, was present, as was Mr Hayes.
‘Perhaps this girl didn’t want what happened to happen but her behaviour did not suggest to these boys, at least to my client, that she was not in agreement,’ Ms Dreyfus-Schmidt said.
Loick Jammes. Pic: Romain Perrocheau/AFP via Getty Images
‘When you go to a nightclub and you drink a lot, it’s not to exchange sweet nothings but to have relations with boys,’ the lawyer said.
‘She was very active. She kissed him [Coulson] in the club, performed fellatio on him in the cab and signalled that she was game,’ Ms Dreyfus-Schmidt added.
V’s lawyer, Anne Cadiot-Feidt, rejected the argument, saying that the players had behaved ‘like thugs’.
On the basis of statements from the accused and witnesses, as well as a sex tape filmed by Mr Coulson, investigators have concluded that there were several incidents of fellatio, and that a banana, a bottle and crutches were inserted in V’s vagina.
Rory Grice. Pic: Romain Perrocheau/AFP via Getty Images
A toxicology report stated that her blood alcohol level was between 2.2g and 3g, a level considered in the danger zone for alcohol poisoning.
CCTV footage showed her having difficulty standing up as she arrived at the hotel and being propped up by a player.
Ms Cadiot-Feidt rejected the players’ version, saying of her client, V: ‘Nobody can be expected to be perfect all the time.’
While the decision to drink as much as she did had been her client’s, this did not authorise anybody ‘to do what they like with her body’, she said.
The players, she said, had a duty to ‘protect’ the woman.
Dylan Hayes. Pic: Romain Perrocheau/AFP via Getty Images
‘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 accusations emerged, to pursue their careers in other clubs.
Rape accusations have shaken the world of international rugby recently.
The French trial comes little more than a week before an Argentine judge will 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 aged 21, were held for weeks in Argentina after the alleged July assault.
And last month, a Fijian player at the French southwestern club Dax was sentenced to a one-year suspended prison term for sexual assault and violence during a drink-fuelled evening.
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