“My father is my star. My mother is the woman of my life. My sister is my light.” It is with this formula that Adrien L. described his family to the personality investigator. The profile of this 34-year-old man contrasts with those of his 50 co-defendants at the Mazan rape trial. They are on average 47 years old. He was 24 years old when he went to the home of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot on March 14, 2014, to engage in “touching, attempts at penetration” vaginal and oral, investigators note on the videos concerning him.
Unlike a significant portion of the accused, who come from relatively modest backgrounds, the thirty-year-old seems to have grown up “with a very united and warm parental couple” : a father CEO of a company with several hundred employees in public construction and a mother a housewife. It is also said “very close” of his sister, Emilie, who is six years older than him. When the psychologist responsible for carrying out her expertise meets him, she finds the thirty-year-old “smiling, friendly and very open to discussion.
His mother, heard on Tuesday October 1 before the Vaucluse criminal court, describes a child “very affectionate”, “hyper sensitive”, “always wanting to please”, “very funny”, “never unpleasant”. At primary school, he was diagnosed with dyslexia, which “puts him in difficulty”. But thanks to the support of a speech therapist, “he moved forward”assures this 63-year-old woman. So, what is Adrien L. doing in the dock?
For him, the tipping point is very clear: he attributes it to “a betrayal” of Marine, his first love. “She got pregnant at 16, I was 18”says the young man during his personality interrogation on Tuesday. “I saw her a bit like my mother, who got pregnant very early, and I wanted to have the same journey as my parents,” he confides in a soft, almost honeyed voice, praising their life “Magnificent”. Adrien L. has no shortage of superlatives to evoke his parents, who have not hidden their disapproval of seeing their son become a father so young.
But he holds on and refuses to allow his partner to abort,“against all”, notes the personality investigator. Little Ninon was born in 2009. Adrien L. was just 19 years old. When she was 3 years old, he decides to take a paternity test, under pressure from his parents. He was away on an apprenticeship all summer when Marine became pregnant.
“They kept telling me there was something wrong with the dates.”
Adrien L.before the Vaucluse criminal court
The young man then discovers that he is not the little girl’s biological father. From then on, relations deteriorated considerably with his partner. “I had hatred towards women”, he analyzes today, estimating that‘”there was a before and an after”. “From that moment on, I increased the number of meetings”. He very quickly meets Stéphanie, who immediately becomes pregnant. Adrien L. took several months to announce the news. “This one is definitely mine!”he finally told his parents.
Throughout his partner’s pregnancy, he shows himself “hourly” towards her. “He could call her a whore.”relates the personality investigator who spoke with her. Little Enzo was born in March 2014. Ten days before, Adrien L. went to the Pelicot couple’s home.
During this period, the psychologist expert believes that the young man had “an exacerbated and uncontrolled sexuality”, noting that“he fails to reject the other, and the notion of frustration is non-existent for him”. The young accused told him that he “tried everything sexually”, by frequenting swingers and libertines clubs in particular. As for the personality investigator, she frowns at one of her statements. The accused confided his “great fear of STDs [maladies sexuellement transmissibles] and adds that he has an aversion to dirt.
“I feel like I’ll fall apart if I don’t wash.”
Adrien L.to the personality investigator
This sentence particularly intrigues him. “Have you been the victim of something?”she asks him, thinking she detects the “post-traumatic sign” of an assault. The will to “wash” being common among victims of sexual violence, “to try to make it disappear” what they experienced. What if Adrien L.’s tipping point was not the one he had shown so far?
“We’re not going to go back on it,” the person concerned responds dryly. On the stand Tuesday afternoon, his sister, extremely moved, confirms having knowledge of the facts “in 2018-2019, when he started consulting a psychologist”. His little brother was 8 years old when a cousin attacked him. “He told me one evening by text message”she explains. He will end up coming to her house to discuss it. “I said we would support him. He said he didn’t want to, so I didn’t feel like I was going against what he wanted. Maybe I should have,” she said, her voice broken by tears, saying she felt “responsible” of the fate of his little brother.
Their mother appears more restrained when an assessor raises the subject. “He spoke to us about it very, very late. He saw it as a shame and didn’t want to hurt us,” she advances, visibly embarrassed. “It’s his protective side”adds the sixty-year-old, insisting on the fact that her husband “suffers greatly”to the point that he “almost made himself responsible for it. He actually stopped working abruptly”she emphasizes.
But Guillaume de Palma, Adrien L.’s lawyer, does not empathize with his client’s mother. “L’Perhaps your environment was too smooth for that kind of thing to be said.”he suggests. “Oui, I think, but if we had known about it when we were little…”the woman tries to explain, cut off in her response. “QEven if things had been said, when he was younger, would it have made much of a difference?”the council asks. “Pmaybe not”, she admits in a barely audible voice.
Alexia Berard, the other lawyer for the accused, does not stop there, and returns to the paternity test concerning little Ninon, who died in 2020 from a road accident. Why did she insist so much that her son take this test? The sixty-year-old tries to justify herself, and ends up blurting out: “I needed to know.”. “Why? It wasn’t your child, but your son’s”retorts the lawyer. “I don’t know… We always protect our children”, she justifies. “You don’t think that discovering this could have caused him difficulties, that it could have altered his psychological construction?“, continues Alexia Berard. “He had given his trust to a person who betrayed him”defends the mother in a trembling voice.
Adrien L. observes him with an immensely tender look, his head resting against his box, like a little boy. Totally out of step with the tension reigning in the courtroom during this exchange. His mother has just been scrapped by her own lawyers. “I will never criticize my parents”however, continues to support the accused during his interrogation. Not even his father, who nevertheless “didn’t want him to work with him” in the family business, even though Adrien L. had studied construction to imitate him.
“You suffered from this devaluation? You express the greatest gratitude to your father, but until when?”his council asks him. “Since I was old enough to decide, I have done like him. My father would have been a firefighter, I would have been a firefighter,” replies Adrien L., who doesn’t budge. The personality investigator wondered if he should not leave Vaucluse, upon leaving prison, to get rid of this omnipotent father figure.
“Anyway, wherever I go, whatever I do, I refer to my father.”
Adrien L.facing the Vaucluse criminal court
When investigators identified him in 2021 as one of the 72 men who went to Mazan, the young man had already been incarcerated since October 2020 at the Pontet penitentiary center, near Avignon, as part of another procedure, pour of the facts of violence and rape out of three old ones companions. He was definitively sentenced on appeal in January to fourteen years in prison in this case. “I’ve hit rock bottom, I can only bounce back”, he assures, emphasizing that he has “worked on him.” Until now, Adrien L. has claimed not to “believe in the absence of consent” by Gisèle Pelicot. He will be heard at the end of the week on the facts.
