https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...st-court-case-quai-des-orfevres-a8726826.html
French policemen on trial over alleged gang-rape of tourist at Paris headquarters
Officers invited Canadian woman to look around famous building before alleged attack
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The Independent
Two officers are alleged to have raped a woman at 36 Quai des Orfevres, the headquarters of Paris police ( AFP/Getty Images )
Two French policemen have gone on trial accused of gang-raping a Canadian tourist at their headquarters in
Paris.
The officers are alleged to have attacked the woman after meeting her in a pub and inviting her for a late-night tour of 36 Quai des Orfevres, a famous address depicted in many films and novels.
Both officers work for the elite BRI force, a unit of the French National Police that investigates gangs and serious crime.
The woman, aged in her 30s, met a group of officers at an Irish pub across the street from the police headquarters on the night of the alleged attack in April 2014.
After several drinks, the officers are said to have invited the woman to look around their workplace.
"I've seen so many films about the place and I was fascinated about it," she said in a November 2017 interview with
France 3 TV.
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While in the police building, the officers are alleged to have tried to ply the woman with whisky before raping her repeatedly.
“They smashed my face against the desk," she said. "I was stunned, I was seeing stars. I couldn't see anything for a while.”
Three officers were arrested after the woman filed a rape complaint, but only two have faced charges.
Judges initially threw out the case but the Paris prosecutor and the alleged victim won their appeal to have it brought to a trial, which starts on Monday.
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The officers, both aged in their late 40s, face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
One of the pair claims he had consensual sex with the woman. The other initially denied any sexual activity before saying there had been “reciprocal touching”.
The officers’ DNA was found on the woman’s underwear along with that of an unknown person.
The third suspect has not been found despite a major operation in which DNA samples were taken from hundreds of officers.
https://www.france24.com/en/2019011...officers-canadian-tourist-quai-orfevres-paris
- /Europe
Elite French police on trial in alleged rape of Canadian tourist
Date created : 14/01/2019 - 16:30
Joël Saget, AFP | File photo taken on April 25, 2014, shows the street sign of the Quai des Orfèvres in Paris, where the Paris criminal investigation department headquarters are located.
Text by: Tracy MCNICOLL
Two elite police officers go on trial in Paris on Monday, five years after a Canadian tourist alleged they raped her at the judicial police’s prestigious headquarters in the heart of the French capital after a late-night encounter at a nearby pub.
It was a scandal that rocked the
elite police unit at the centre of the allegations. Five years on, the officers’ trial will take place just steps from the alleged scene of the crime, in the courthouse adjacent to the storied 36, quai des Orfèvres, an address synonymous in
France with popular crime fiction and the real-life home for more than a century to Paris’s judicial
police, who investigate major crimes. Those offices, on the Ile de la Cité near Notre-Dame, were relocated to northern
Paris in 2017.
On the night of April 22, 2014,
Canadian tourist Emily Spanton made the acquaintance of a group of off-duty police officers at Le Galway, a quayside Irish pub across the Seine from the headquarters where they worked. After midnight, a pair of officers from the elite anti-gang brigade invited a heavily inebriated Spanton back to the office for a late-night tour. One of the policemen, Antoine Q., ferried the then-34-year-old over by car while a second, Nicolas R., joined them on foot.
The daughter of a Toronto police officer, Spanton would later tell investigators, “I had had a lot to drink. I couldn’t see myself going back to the hotel in that state and I thought that, going to a police station, I’d feel safer.” But the Canadian visitor would exit the building at around 2am in tears, barefoot and no longer wearing her tights, alleging she had been
raped by four policemen, an account she later revised to at least three.
The two officers on trial, now aged 40 and 49, deny raping Spanton: Nicolas R. has said she performed oral sex on him, an act he claims was consensual and did not involve ejaculation, while Antoine Q., after initially denying any sexual relations with the Canadian, eventually said he did engage consensually in manual sexual touching in the car. (The officers’ full names have been withheld under a French law that protects the anonymity of law enforcement officers associated with certain services and units for security reasons.)
Forensics, meanwhile, revealed gynaecological trauma on the alleged victim and DNA from both of the accused on her underwear as well as her DNA mixed with Antoine Q’s own DNA on two pairs of his underwear. The investigation found that text messages and videos had been erased from the officers’ mobile phones, but one compromising text message was discovered on the phone of the colleague who received it that night at 1am. The message, sent by Nicolas R., appeared to indicate the officer felt a woman he was with was inclined to orgies and entreated the colleague to “hurry up”. Investigators did not find a match for a third person’s DNA found on Spanton’s underwear despite comparing it with samples taken from
more than 100 judicial police officers.
Still, investigating magistrates in 2016
initially had the case dismissed, citing “incoherencies” in Spanton’s account, including her confusion over whether there were three or four assailants, and saying her remarks when questioned were
“often defensive”. During the investigation, some experts expressed reservations over taking Spanton at her word alone. Toxicology reports, meanwhile, found the Canadian had consumed anti-depressants, opiates and cannabis, in addition to the large amounts of alcohol. In 2017, after the public prosecutor’s office and civil parties appealed, a court overturned the dismissal and sent the officers to trial.
Spanton, for her part, has
told the Toronto Star newspaper that she “was in no state to give consent” on the night of her alleged rape. “We need to be having a societal conversation about what actual consent is,” she told the newspaper.
In the face of a multitude of physical evidence, Spanton’s Paris-based lawyer says, this trial will be a trial about consent. “Of course there will be the clichés about rape that will be debated,” Sophie Obadia told Europe 1 radio on Monday. “Can a woman alone, in Paris, walk around and live as she likes, come and go dressed in a feminine way? Does she have the right to drink? Can she freely consent when she wants to and say no when she doesn’t want to and be considered at that moment a victim? That’s the question.”
The Toronto Star, citing Spanton's Toronto-based lawyer, highlighted stark differences between
sexual assault investigations in Canada and France. A French investigating magistrate and two police officers travelled from Paris to Canada to interview Spanton’s family, friends and current and former partners to probe her credibility. In 2015, Spanton was required to return to Paris for a French judicial proceeding known as a “confrontation” in which she came face to face with the accused in the presence of a judge, a process Spanton’s Paris-based lawyer says “amplified her trauma”.
The trial is due to run for three weeks through February 1. If found guilty, the officers could face up to 20 years in prison.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...police-officers-charged-rape-canadian-tourist
Trial begins for French police officers charged with raping Canadian tourist
Two officers accused of raping the woman at Paris police headquarters in April 2014 deny any wrongdoing
Associated Press in Paris
Mon 14 Jan 2019 17.53 GMT
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The Paris police HQ at 36 Quai des Orfevres, a famous address depicted in many crime movies and novels. Photograph: Bertrand Guay/AFP/Getty Images
Two French policemen have gone on trial on charges of
gang-raping a Canadian tourist at Paris police headquarters nearly five years ago.
The officers, both members of the BRI anti-gang force at the time, are accused of raping the woman at 36 Quai des Orfèvres, a famous address depicted in many crime movies and novels.
They deny any wrongdoing and claim the alleged victim consented to sexual interactions during a booze-fueled evening.
Their trial is expected to last three weeks.
The woman, Emily Spanton, attended the trial’s first day at a
Paris courthouse located only a stone’s throw from the police headquarters. She said she met a group of officers across the street near the Seine River in an Irish pub in April 2014.
After several drinks, they invited her for a night tour of police headquarters, where she claimed she was forced to drink whisky, perform oral sex and was raped several times. She left the building about 90 minutes later, barefoot and without her tights.
Officers at Paris police headquarters to be DNA tested in gang-rape case
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According to court documents,
the men’s DNA was found on the woman’s underwear. Court president Stephane Duchemin said a medical exam performed after she filed a lawsuit showed she had bruises on several parts of her body and a gynecological lesion.
Experts also determined she was drunk and that she had “between 2.6 and 3.3 grams of alcohol per liter of blood in her body” when the alleged rapes took place.
The Associated Press does not usually identify alleged victims of sexual violence unless they have come forward and voluntarily identified themselves, as Spanton did.
Spanton first said that she had been raped by four officers before revising her testimony to cite three police. Only two policemen have been brought to court.
Judges initially threw out the case but the Paris prosecutor and the alleged victim won their appeal to have it brought to a trial.
The officers, who have not been jailed, face up to 20 years in prison. One of the officers admitted he received oral sex but claims he did not force the Canadian woman. The other initially denied any sexual relationship then admitted to some mutual touching.
