IRISH RUGBY PLAYER Denis Coulson has been sentenced to 14 years in prison after he was found guilty of the 2017 gang rape of a student in France.
Coulson and Loick Jammes of France were both jailed for 14 years by a French court on Friday, while Rory Grice of New Zealand was given a 12-year sentence.
Former Ireland international Chris Farrell was sentenced to four years, with two suspended, for his failure to prevent the crime. RTÉ reports that Farrell will not serve time in prison but will be required to wear an electronic tag for two years and remain in France.
Dylan Hayes of New Zealand received a two-year suspended sentence, also for not intervening to prevent the crime.
All five were team-mates at Grenoble Rugby at the time of the crime in the early hours of 12 March 2017, when a student, identified only as ‘V’, filed a complaint to police.
She alleged that the sexual attack happened in a hotel on the outskirts of Bordeaux having met members of the Grenoble team as they socialised after losing a Top 14 encounter against local side Bordeaux-Begles.
V 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 all of them drank heavily.
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.
She saw two naked men in the room and others fully dressed.
Coulson, Jammes and Grice stated they had sexual relations with V but claimed the encounter was consensual and the student had been pro-active in bringing it about.
It was alleged that Farrell, owner of the crutch, was present, as was Hayes.
Evidence in the Bordeaux trial was heard without media in the court.
The victim’s lawyer Anne Cadiot-Feidt said it had been “unbearable” during the trial to hear the defendants describe her client as “a trollop – if I’m being polite – an eager party who used them and even exhausted them”.
“It’s vile, it’s disgusting, it’s obscene and that is perhaps also why the sentencing requests are what they are,” she said.
Gaessy Gros, another lawyer for the victim, said those accused had “missed their chance” by continuing to deny rape and remaining united like a team on the rugby pitch.
Valerie Coriatt, defending Grice, however described the requested sentences as “almost indecent” for defendants who, she said, “are not a danger to society”.
On the basis of statements from the accused and witnesses, as well as a video shot by Coulson, investigators have concluded there were several incidents where objects, including the crutch, a banana and a bottle, were inserted in V’s vagina.
A toxicology report stated 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 standing up as she arrived at the hotel and being propped up by a player.
In court this week, Gros stressed that the victim had no recollection of what happened after leaving the night club.
A psychiatric expert said she would likely have been on “automatic pilot” during the alleged rape.
Gros has said V was “in no state to give her consent as these men who carried her, who were with her, know perfectly well.”
Coulson’s lawyer, Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt, earlier this week described the victim as “very active” and willing.
“If you see someone who is completely lifeless, in an alcohol coma, and you sexually abuse her, it’s not the same thing as if you see a woman who is taking action, moaning and acting in a coordinated way. That’s what they saw,” she said.
On Wednesday, she said her client had apologised to the victim.
“He asked her for forgiveness and he asked his teammates too because he feels responsible in as much as it was him who led the young woman into the room,” she said.
Denis Dreyfus, defending Jammes, said there was not “the slightest ambiguity” on the plaintiff’s attitude.
Arnaud Lucien, representing Hayes, said the jail terms requested were “very high”, saying there had not been enough of a distinction between the behaviour of each person in the case.
- © AFP 2024, with reporting from Niall O’Connor
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