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The trial of a group of rugby players accused of gang raping a student after a 2017 match by leading French team Grenoble was due to open Monday. But the absence of one of them, immobilised in Ireland after a car accident, forced the court to postpone the trial.
The proceedings started in the early afternoon but the court had to postpone the trial as one of the three co-accused of gang rape, Irishman Denis Coulson, was absent.
“Unfortunately, he was involved in an extremely serious road accident,” said his lawyer Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt. “He is still in hospital with polytrauma.”
The trial in southwestern city Bordeaux, scene of the suspected rape, will therefore take place to a later date, from 2 to 13 December 2024.
It will turn on whether a young woman, now 27, was too drunk to consent to sex.
“What is consent? At what point is it diminished or even totally absent?” one of her lawyers, Anne Cadiot-Feidt, told French news agency AFP.
Named only as V., the plaintiff has opted for anonymity to protect her personal and professional lives, her lawyers say.
Irishman Denis Coulson, 30, New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, and French 29-year-old Loick Jammes are accused of raping the plaintiff.
Two fellow players, 31-year-old Irishman Chris Farrell – a member of Ireland’s Grand Slam-winning 2018 Six Nations squad – and New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 30, are being tried for failing to prevent a crime.
V. and two friends encountered the rugby players in a Bordeaux bar after the Grenoble team played a Top 14 championship match on 11 March, 2017 – a few months before the #MeToo movement was sparked in the United States.
