After five months of proceedings, the Argentine courts ruled on the dismissal of the case, that is to say the abandonment of the proceedings against Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou, the two rugby players charged with aggravated rape in Argentina in July, in on the sidelines of a tour of the XV of France.
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They are officially free. This Tuesday, December 10, at the judicial center of Mendoza (west), rugby players Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jegou were notified that the charges against them were dropped, five months after the outbreak of a affair that shook the world of rugby in France, Argentina and beyond.
Auradou and Jegou, both 21 years old, were charged with aggravated rapebecause in a meeting: alleged facts that occurred on the night of July 6 to 7 in a hotel in Mendoza, where the XV of France had just played a match against Argentina.
The two young men affirmed from the beginning that the sexual relations with the complainant, a 39-year-old Argentinian they met in a nightclub, were consensual, and without violence.
The plaintiff’s lawyer, however, denounced a rape with “terrible violence”in a case which saw two radically opposed versions of the facts clash, apart from a convergence on the reality of sexual acts in the bedroom and an alcoholic context.
“Notorious contradictions, inconsistencies…”
Two weeks ago, Judge Eleanora Arenas heard the arguments for and against the dismissal of the case, during hearings spread over two half-days.
The prosecution had argued in favor of dropping the charges, as it announced at the beginning of October at the end of the investigation. Early in the case, notably in mid-August when deciding to release the two players, he noted “ notable contradictions, inconsistencies, gray areas » in the complainant’s account.
Then the players’ lawyers also had pleaded for a dismissal of the casewhich they had been demanding since August. For them, “ everything has been said » in a folder where “ the crime did not exist “, because of ” the existence of consent “. And this case is that of a “ scandalous denunciation (…) with financial aims » compensation.
Pleading after them, Natacha Romano, the plaintiff’s lawyer, asked “ total rejection » of the dismissal of the case and demanded that the investigation continue with a new prosecutor.
Towards a call from the complainant?
Natacha Romano had, moreover, deplored an audience spent “ accuse a victim of lying “, instead ” to evaluate what happened between (the) four walls » from the hotel room that night.
Jegou and Auradou, for their part, have resumed professional rugby in France : since October for Auradou with Pau, in November for Jegou with La Rochelle.
They returned to France at the beginning of September, after the green light from the Argentine courts, which then considered that “ the initial accusation (had) lost its force “. At the start of the affair, they had spent more than a week in preventive detention, then almost a month under house arrest.
The judge’s decision is not final at this time. The plaintiff’s defense has the possibility of appealing, which would refer the case to another authority.