A lawyer for Irish former rugby player Denis Coulson has said she will lodge an appeal against his conviction for the rape of a young woman in a hotel in southwestern France.
Coulson, a former Ireland under-20 international from Dublin, was sentenced to 14 years in prison after being found guilty of raping the then 20-year-old student in a hotel room in Mérignac, on the outskirts of Bordeaux in March 2017.
His team-mate, Co Fermanagh-born Chris Farrell, was given a four-year sentence, with two years suspended, after being convicted of failing to prevent a crime.
French man Loïck Jammes (30) was jailed for 14 years for rape, while New Zealander Rory Grice (34) was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
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Dylan Hayes, from New Zealand, was given a two-year suspended sentence after being found guilty of failing to prevent a crime.
All five men were playing for FC Grenoble at the time.
The jury, made up of three judges and six members of the public, delivered the verdicts and sentences on Friday evening after deliberating for almost nine hours.
Judge Marie-Noëlle Billaud, president of the cour d’assises of the Gironde region, had excluded the media from proceedings at the outset of the trial, at the victim’s request.
Grégoire Mouly, a lawyer for the victim, said she was relieved by the verdicts, and said they would be welcomed by other survivors of rape. “After seven years and nine months, the French justice system has said to her: ‘We believe you.’ She has felt a lot of anger, a lot of stress. There will be an appeal, but she can sleep tonight knowing that she was believed.”
The court heard the woman met the five men while with two friends in a bar in Bordeaux on March 11th, 2017.
She went on to a nightclub with them, and later back to their hotel in Mérignac. She said she and the players, who had just lost a Top 14 championship match to local side Bordeaux Bègles, had all been drinking heavily.
The student later told police that she had no recollection of getting from the nightclub to the hotel, and could not remember anything that happened in the room. In CCTV footage shown to the jury she appeared to be having difficulty walking and was being propped up by Coulson after the pair were dropped off by a taxi at the hotel.
During the trial, a 55-second video filmed by Coulson was shown to the court. Lawyers for the defendants insisted it showed the woman was a willing participant and had consented to sex.
A toxicology report later stated the woman’s blood alcohol level was between 2.2 and three grammes, a level considered in the danger zone for alcohol poisoning. Her lawyers argued that she was unable to consent to sex because she was intoxicated, and claimed the players had a duty to “protect” her and should not have “exploited” her.
The student told police she regained consciousness early the following morning. She said she was lying naked on a bed. She said there were two naked men in the room and others who were fully dressed.
Her lawyers told the court she had left the hotel in tears and filed a complaint to police later that morning. A psychiatric expert gave evidence to the trial that the woman would likely have been on “automatic pilot” during the rape.
Speaking after the sentencing, Coulson’s lawyer Corinne Dreyfus-Schmidt said she would appeal the decision and would request that her client be released.
She said she and Coulson were “devastated” by the 14-year term. “The sentencing was absolutely disproportionate, unreasonable and shocking. Such severe sentences are usually handed down only in very particular circumstances, such as incest.”
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