Former Irish international Denis Coulson has been found guilty of the rape of a woman in Bordeaux and has been sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Coulson, 30, was accused of gang rape, as were New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, and Frenchman Loick Jammes, 30.
Irish national Chris Farrell, 31, and New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 40, were charged with failure to prevent a crime.
In the early hours of March 12, 2017, the student, identified only as V in court, was in tears as she left a hotel on the outskirts of Bordeaux.
At that time, the Grenoble team (FCG) spent the night after losing a Top 14 encounter against local team UBB.
The then 20-year-old filed a complaint with police, 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.
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 and with a crutch inserted in her vagina.
Farrell has now been given a four-year sentence with two years suspended for failure to prevent a crime.
Former Irish international rugby player Denis Coulson (pictured) has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after being found guilty of raping a woman in a hotel in Bordeaux
Loick Jammes, 30, from France, was found guilty of rape and given a 14-year sentence
Rory Grice, 34, from New Zealand was found guilty of rape and given a 12-year sentence
The court was told that he will not be sent to prison but will have to wear an electronic tag for the two years and remain in France.
The verdicts in this trial, which began a week ago, were delivered in Courtroom G in Bordeaux’s Cour d’Asisses.
Jammes, from France, was found guilty of rape and given a 14-year sentence.
Grice, from New Zealand, was found guilty of rape and given a 12-year sentence.
Hayes, also from New Zealand, was given a two-year suspended sentence for failure to prevent a crime.
All five defendants had denied the charges against them.
Gaessy Gros, one of the lawyers representing the victim, said the ruling ‘gave a very strong signal to men in this country, to the rugby world, and to women’.
‘Ladies, you can dress as you like, drink as much as you like, that freedom does not have a price,’ he said.
The trial was held behind closed doors, in the absence of the media or the public, at the request of the lawyers for the complainant.
Coulson joined Grenoble in 2014 and played for the side until 2017.
Farrell also joined Grenoble in 2014 and played there until 2017. He also played for Ireland 15 times, including at the 2019 Rugby World Cup.
The trial, held in the southwestern French city of Bordeaux, had originally been scheduled for June but was delayed after Coulson was badly injured in a traffic accident.
The victim said that she saw two naked men in the room and others fully dressed.
Coulson, Jammes and Grice stated that they had sexual relations with V. but claimed the encounter was consensual and the student had been pro-active in bringing it about.
Coulson (pictured), Jammes and Grice stated that they had sexual relations with V. but claimed the encounter was consensual
Dylan Hayes, 30, from New Zealand was also given a two-year suspended sentence for failure to prevent a crime
Farrell, owner of the crutch, was present, as was 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,’ Dreyfus-Schmidt said at the opening of the case.
‘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.’
V.’s lawyer, Anne Cadiot-Feidt, rejected the argument, saying the players had acted ‘like thugs’.
A toxicology report stated that the victim’s 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 standing up as she arrived at the hotel and being propped up by a player.
Cadiot-Feidt rejected the players’ version of events, saying of her client: ‘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.
‘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.
Coulson’s lawyer Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt on Wednesday that her client had apologised to the victim and his teammates too ‘because he feels responsible as it was him who led the young woman into the room’.
Chris Farrell was given a four-year sentence with two years suspended for failure to prevent a crime
Rape accusations have shaken the world of international rugby recently.
An Argentinian court on Tuesday dismissed rape charges against two French international rugby players accused of assaulting a woman after playing a match in the country in July.
Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, both aged 21, were held for weeks in Argentina after the alleged July assault.
A 39-year-old woman, whom they met in a nightclub accused them of a vicious assault in a hotel room.
A judge in Mendoza dismissed the case on the advice of the prosecution, which called for the charges to be dropped over inconsistencies in the woman’s version of events. Her lawyer is also planning to appeal.
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