several hundred people at the silent march in support of Gisèle Pelicot

With white roses in hand, hundreds of people, including many women victims of violence, marched in silence “uncovered”in support of Gisèle Pelicot, in Mazan, Saturday October 5 afternoon.

Mazan, a town in Vaucluse, where, for years, Gisèle Pelicot, now in her seventies, had been drugged with anxiolytics and raped by her husband and dozens of strangers he recruited on the Internet, facts judged before the criminal court in Avignon since September 2.

The march was opened by women who have all been victims of violence and who are learning to rebuild themselves thanks to equine therapy, within the Isofaculté association, at the initiative of this event.

“This is the first time I have demonstrated. I think it’s normal to do it for a woman and for my experience”testifies Catherine Borel, 69 years old. “This trial is terrible, hard, but this woman has tremendous courage to have succeeded in rebuilding herself. It will allow progress. I was a victim of things thirty years ago, and there was nothing we could do about it. They didn’t believe me about the violence, and I found myself with my two kids flying out the window.”she dares to say today.

With her, Josiane Dolce, an elegant little lady of 73 years old, with red hair like Gisèle Pelicot, confides that she has always “there in [s]at head » the traces of the psychological violence of which she was a victim. Both came from Carpentras, a neighboring town. “If there are women in the same situation, dare to say it, let us support you”they add.

Arriving at the Mazan stables after an hour of walking on a small road, the demonstrators placed their flowers at the foot of a wooden heart on which was written “Love, empathy, living better together”.

Videos shown at trial

For the first time, on Friday, videos and photos were broadcast in the presence of the public at the Mazan rape trial, in Avignon, without however changing the accused concerned who almost all maintained that they thought they were participating in a ” scenario “ libertine.

Returning to the initial decision of its president, Roger Arata, the Vaucluse criminal court in fact decided at midday, after a long debate of almost two hours between the parties, that the images broadcast during this emblematic trial of violence against women and chemical submission would now be carried out in the presence of the press and the public.

The broadcast of these images, carefully archived by Dominique Pelicot, who admitted to having drugged his wife, Gisèle, from 2011 to 2020, without her knowledge, in order to rape her and have her raped by dozens of men he had recruited on the Internet, aims to confront the accused with their statements. Most of them claim to have believed they were participating in the fantasy of a swinging couple or not to have realized Gisèle Pelicot’s state of unconsciousness.