French student cleared of spiteful rape allegation

A French student who came to Malta to study English last August, only to be accused of rape has been exonerated, the court saying the allegations were likely made to spite him.


32-year-old Yannick Jonathan Chatelle had been accused of the rape of a young Spanish woman while she was drunk. Chatelle and the complainant, Isabele Pantoja Ludena, had been out drinking and dancing with friends.

Ludena told the police that she had found herself in her apartment, fully clothed except for her underwear, after the two had been drinking in a nearby car park. She had claimed not to remember how she had ended up at home.

Chatelle had testified that the woman had requested a lift home and that he had obliged. The court had seen CCTV footage showing Ludena walking to her apartment alone, but because she had lost her key she had opted to stay in Chatelle's nearby apartment until her flatmates returned.

The man said that while she was in his apartment, the girl tried to have sex with him but he was not attracted to her and, being sleepy because of the alcohol, had gone to sleep in another bed.

The woman claimed to have filed the police report after seeing the footage which she said, showed that she had been reluctant to follow the accused to his apartment. However, Ludena also admitted that she had no recollection of what had happened other than that she felt physically uncomfortable.

Magistrate Consuelo Scerri-Herrera found for the accused, noting that the CCTV footage proved that the girl spent less than 30 minutes in the man's apartment and had walked back to her own apartment unaided.

There was no signs of a struggle and no apparent calls for help, noted the court. The woman had gone to the man's apartment with the intention of having sex and had filed the rape charge out of spite when she had seen the accused with other girls, three whole days later.

A court-appointed medical expert had reported no evidence of violence and forensic reports showed an absence of the woman's DNA on Chatelle's clothes.

Saying it also found the accused's version of events to be more believable, the court dismissed the rape charge on the grounds of lack of evidence.

Lawyers Joe Giglio and Martin Fenech were defence counsel.