New Zealand rugby player Rory Grice (R) leaves the court following a hearing at the Bordeaux courthouse, south-western France on 17 June, 2024. Photo: CHRISTOPHE ARCHAMBAULT / AFP
Warning: This story contains details of sexual assault.
A court in France on Friday jailed three rugby players formerly with French side Grenoble for 12 to 14 years over the 2017 gang rape of a student.
It sentenced Irishman Denis Coulson, 30, and Frenchman Loick Jammes, 30, to 14 years behind bars, and New Zealander Rory Grice, 34, to 12 years in jail.
It handed four years in jail, including two suspended, to ex-Ireland international 31-year-old Chris Farrel over failure to prevent the crime.
New Zealander Dylan Hayes, 30, received a two-year suspended sentence, also for not intervening to stop it.
In the small hours of 12 March, 2017, the student, identified only as V, was in tears as she left a hotel on the outskirts of Bordeaux, where the Grenoble team spent the night 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 proactive in bringing it about.
Farrell, owner of the crutch, was present, as was Hayes.
- AFP
Where to get help:
Victim Support 0800 842 846
Rape Crisis 0800 88 33 00
HELP Call 24/7 (Auckland): 09 623 1700, (Wellington): 04 801 6655 - push 0 at the menu
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) 022 344 0496