Two elite Paris police officers guilty of gang raping Canadian tourist

Two French policemen have been convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison for the gang- rape of a Canadian tourist inside the Paris police headquarters nearly five years ago. (File Photo By Jebulon/Wikimedia commons, CC0)

PARIS — Two French policemen have been convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison for the gang- rape of a Canadian tourist inside the Paris police headquarters nearly five years ago.

The officers, who were both members of an anti-gang force at the time, were accused of raping Emily Spanton in April 2014 at 36 Quai des Orfevres, a famous address depicted in many crime movies and novels.

Spanton, the daughter of a Toronto police officer, 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 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.

According to court documents, the men’s DNA was found on Spanton’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 litre 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 were brought to court.

Judges initially threw out the case but the Paris prosecutor and the victim won their appeal to have it brought to a trial.

The officers denied any wrongdoing and claimed Spanton consented to sexual interactions during a booze-fuelled evening.