EX-Ireland rugby participant Denis Coulson is to be charged with others with the alleged gang rape of a woman filmed with a cell cellphone.
An investigating choose has ordered ex-Leinster and Connacht prop Coulson, 25, who denies the accusation, to appear before a courtroom in Bordeaux.
He is appearing together with New Zealander Rory Grice, 29, and Frenchman Loick Jammes, 24, over the alleged incident on March 12, 2017.
It is claimed the girl became penetrated with the cease of a crutch for the duration of the incident.
The price of gang rape includes up to 20 years upon conviction underneath French law.
All 3 guys, who played for French facet Grenoble at the time, were below formal research because the then 21-year-old alleged sufferer contacted police years ago.
ALL THREE DENY ACCUSATIONS
They have strenuously denied the accusations and demand the come upon, which passed off following an in shape among Grenoble and Union Bordeaux-Bègles, changed into consensual.
The trio met the female, who was out celebrating a birthday with buddies, in a Bordeaux nightclub.
She then followed them back to their crew resort in Merignac on the city’s outskirts, where the alleged offense occurred.
Prosecutors allege part of the incident turned into recorded on a cell smartphone.
French media reports declare a psychiatric record on the girl indicated she become so drunk that night time, she became “on the automated pilot, not able to realize wherein she changed into.”
Prosecutors declared: “The theory aired at some point of the investigative manner of a sexual orgy freely consented to with three men cannot be fairly every day, for the reason that these sexual incidents have been at once observed by way of a mental disintegrate of the young woman, with tears, suffocation, shivering and disorientation.”
The Irish Times formerly pronounced that in a ‘confrontation’ between the alleged sufferer and the players in June 2018, she told them: “I would really like them to apprehend, and for all men to understand, that once a lady is drowsing you don’t stick objects interior her, and you don’t have sex together with her. Just due to the fact I smiled at you in the direction of the evening didn’t suggest I wanted it.”
Such ‘confrontations,’ which take vicinity in the workplace of investigating magistrates, are normally used to decide on the prosecution.
COULSON’S LAWYERS DENOUNCE PROBE
A French lawyer for Coulson, who performs for 2d division French side Carcassonne, has already denounced the investigation into what occurred as “absolutely biased.”
Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt said: “The phrases by myself of a complainant are not sufficient to send this before a criminal court, especially due to the fact they are contradicted via a few witness testimonies.”
She has additionally said she could also attract the prosecutor’s request to have the problem despatched to trial.
Loick Jammes’ attorney, Denis Dreyfus, also said: “There is an excessive amount of doubt about the difficulty of consent for there to be an ordeal.”
After information of the alleged incident first emerged in April 2017, Coulson’s Irish consultant, Cahir O’Higgins, stated RTE.
In it, he stated: “It is an utter shame Mr. Coulson hasn’t been launched from the system.
“Despite the fact he is completely innocent, his reputation is being critically and unfairly tarnished.”
