The Mazan rape trial is a “testament” for “future generations”, say Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers

The Mazan rape trial will be a « testament » pour “future generations”pleaded Wednesday one of the lawyers of Gisèle Pelicot, drugged and raped for a decade by her husband and dozens of strangers recruited on the Internet. These generations who “will discover Gisèle Pelicot, her courage, the price she paid to change society”explained M^e Stéphane Babonneau, drawing a parallel between this “Avignon trial” and that of Aix-en-Provence in 1978 where lawyer Gisèle Halimi had rape recognized as a crime.

Then he spoke directly to his client, surrounded by her two sons and daughter: “Gisèle Pelicot, you went beyond what could be expected of you, passing the torch to future generations. » The lawyer finally concluded his pleading of just over an hour by addressing the Vaucluse criminal court: “The time has now come for the civil party to place their hope, their hope, their future in your hands. »

“Gisèle Pelicot expected nothing from the accused. But even without any expectations, almost all [des accusés] managed to disappoint her with the indigence of their arguments”he asserted, evoking the excuses put forward by some of the fifty-one accused in this emblematic trial of sexual violence and chemical submission, which began on September 2 in Avignon.

“They explain an “accidental” rape, an “involuntary” rape, an “altruistic” rape, and now even an “irresponsible” rape”said M.^e Babonneau, referring to the approach of around ten defense lawyers on Wednesday morning: a subsidiary request to the court concerning thirty-three of the fifty co-accused, evoking a possible “impairment of discernment” of their customers.

Castigating “the culture of rape which we saw illustrated during this trial”M^e Babonneau placed the court, which must deliver its verdict no later than December 20, before a “social choice”. “Rape has never been the subject of such visceral rejection in France, but at the same time its diffusion has never been so easy”he estimated, hoping that this trial would allow “to change the idea anchored in a masculine imagination that the woman's body is an object of conquest”.

Almost political gesture

“How, in France, in 2024, can a woman still suffer what Gisèle Pelicot suffered for at least ten years? How can we find fifty individuals in France, but in reality seventy [plusieurs n’ont jamais été identifiés et ne seront donc jamais jugés]men »to come and sexually assault this body, questioned his colleague from the civil party M^e Antoine Camus a little earlier in his pleading. The lawyer recalled the videos of the facts, carefully recorded, captioned and stored by Dominique Pelicot, where M^me Pelicot was this inert “that we would think she was dead”.

“By this almost political gesture of renouncing the closed session”on September 2, at the opening of this extraordinary trial before the Vaucluse criminal court, M^me Pelicot a “invited all of society to ask questions, to become aware, to change mentalities, for a future which would finally break with a violence that we wish for another age”he said.

“Gisèle Pelicot would have every reason in the world to be full of hatred today, to pit men and women against each other and to castigate male sexuality in general”continued the lawyer. But “Gisèle Pelicot chose to transform this mud into noble material and to go beyond the darkness of her story to find meaning in it: she is counting on the court to help her”.

For an hour, without hesitation, the lawyer asked that “justice and truth” be returned for this family, this woman, her daughter and her two sons, and her grandchildren, “buried for four years under rubble” after the “explosion” of the revelation of the facts, in the fall of 2020.

But he did not dwell on Dominique Pelicot, this “split personality”with its « face A » of “good husband, grandfather, friend, neighbor”and its « face B » when, mainly at night, he would drug his wife with anxiolytics so that he could then dispose of her and hand her over to strangers.

In fact, the main accused recognizing his role as “conductor” of the approximately 200 rapes recorded over a decade against his ex-wife, at their marital home in Mazan (Vaucluse), half of which were committed by himself, it seems difficult to imagine that he would escape the maximum sentence provided for, of twenty years in prison. criminal imprisonment.

“Rape is rape”

M^e Camus therefore focused on the fifty co-defendants. And “all had free will”he insisted: “Everyone at their own level contributed to this monstrosity and allowed the ordeal of a woman to continue”, “it’s the banality of Hannah Arendt’s evil”.

“All have chosen to resign from thought to make their impulses prevail”continued the lawyer, asking that the court make decisions “clear” et “farms”particularly on the question surrounding the intentionality of the rape, an argument put forward by almost all of the co-defendants who recognize the materiality of the facts but not “intent to rape”.

“Rape is rape”he repeated, facing defense lawyers who will undoubtedly try to explain that their clients were “manipulated” by Dominique Pelicot and that they only thought they were participating in the scenario of a libertine couple.

For M^e Camus, this trial will also have shed light on the question of chemical submission, “this diabolical modus operandi” Who “is nothing other than the modus operandi of the perfect crime: Gisèle Pelicot did not wake up with a swollen face or next to a stranger. She woke up next to a man who loved her, didn't beat her, who willingly made her a doctor's appointment.”.

He finally castigated the “courtroom mistreatment” inflicted by certain defense lawyers on Gisèle Pelicot, sometimes going so far as to imply that she could have been complicit and consenting.

Before the start of this pleading, Dominique Pelicot tried again to apologize to his family on Wednesday morning, arousing the anger of his daughter Caroline: “You will end up alone, like a dog!” »

The president of the court officially suspended the trial until Monday. The floor will then be given to the public prosecutor, for an indictment which could last until Wednesday.