French rugby players are cleared of sexual assault in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — An Argentine court has dropped aggravated sexual assault charges against two professional French rugby players accused of raping a woman after a match in the country earlier this year. On Tuesday the judge in Mendoza, some 1,000 kilometers west of the capital of Buenos Aires, dismissed the case against the 21-year-old athletes, Hugo Auradou and Oscar Jégou, citing insufficient evidence. The plaintiff can appeal the ruling. The case began in July, when a 39-year-old Argentine woman filed a police complaint alleging that she was beaten, choked and repeatedly raped by the rugby players in their Mendoza hotel room after meeting them at a nightclub. Auradou and Jégou claimed that the sex had been consensual.