The lawyer for the main accused tried to humanize her client while twenty years of imprisonment were requested against him. She also sent the men who came to rape Gisèle Pelicot to the couple's home on their own responsibility.
“Despite myself, since September 2, I have become the devil’s advocate.” It is with these words that Béatrice Zavarro begins her pleading, Wednesday November 27, the birthday of her client, Dominique Pelicot, the main accused in the Mazan rape trial. “Calendar coincidence”she slips, speaking a few hours after the end of the public prosecutor's requisitions. The Marseille lawyer seems very small in the crowded courtroom. “As I have often said: it’s you and me against the whole world”exposes this 55-year-old woman speaking directly to the man who is now 72 years old.
“This bond that we formed caused me great loneliness”she emphasizes, in a calm and calm voice. For twelve weeks now, Béatrice Zavarro has been sitting alone, near her client, perched on his chair in his glass box. The lawyer is “deserted by all neighbors, with the exception of Madam Clerk”. Away from dozens of defense lawyers, who represent the 50 other defendants. Councils which tried, in turn, to place the main responsibility on the septuagenarian for the actions of all these men, who came to the couple's home to rape Gisèle Pelicot.
But this courtroom ostracization did not prevent her from taking on her mission, which was perilous to say the least: defending the man who is accused of having drugged his ex-wife from 2011 to 2020 to the point of unconsciousness. And to have delivered it to dozens of strangers, met on the internet.
“I fully assume the defense of Dominique Pelicot, because he trusted me.”
Béatrice Zavarro, lawyer for Dominique Pelicotbefore the Vaucluse criminal court
Throughout her 1h15 pleading, she attempts to humanize the man who is hated by everyone, by first returning to her childhood, under the influence of a violent father, who always showed his preference for Joël, the older brother of Dominique, “he who studied, he who was a doctor”who came to testify during this trial. “Dominique preferred his mother, Juliette, submissive and dependent”she reports, recalling that the 72-year-old accused claimed to have witnessed scenes of rape by his own father and by other men.
Added to this trauma are two others, which she cites in court: the rape that Dominique Pelicot says she suffered from a nurse in 1960 at the age of 8 and the gang rape of a woman on a construction site, in which he was allegedly forced to participate when he was 14 years old. She observes that“there is no resilience” at his client, who could have taken another path, but who became “a pervert”in the words of the accused. This journey would have given rise to a “other Dominic”for whom she pleads today. Taking up the phrase tattooed on the arm of one of the accused – “My worst enemy is me” – she asks:
“Isn’t Dominique Pelicot’s worst enemy precisely Dominique Pelicot?”
Béatrice Zavarro, lawyer for Dominique Pelicotbefore the Vaucluse criminal court
And to propose to the court to move away “some of what the prosecution demanded most strongly”namely the maximum sentence of twenty years of criminal imprisonment, requested Monday by the public prosecutor.
The lawyer then looks at his criminal pattern, illustrated by his compulsive connections to the site Coco.fr and by the classified ad he allegedly posted there: “I am looking for perverted accomplice to abuse my sleeping wife.” The lawyer dwells at length on the question of her motive, which is still quite mysterious, Dominique Pelicot having only spoken on the subject during her final interrogation. To try to see things more clearly, Béatrice Zavarro ventures into the field of psychology, after speaking with a sexologist, who explained to her that her client delegated to his co-defendants “his power of virility”. A virility “tenfold” afterwards.
Those interested listen to it, from their benches or in the box, without flinching. “There is a 'not seen, not caught' side among these men, a crazy, fantastical way of accessing pleasure”she declares, repeating the words of a psychologist expert heard at the trial. The lawyer classifies the accused, without naming them, into different groups: “the impatient ones, who connect the same day”, “those who feel like stars” through the images shot by Dominique Pelicot, “the archaic” for whom the husband's agreement is sufficient, “the clever ones” who talk about “involuntary rape”etc. In summary, she believes, “the common rapist is a good Frenchman, not a psychopath and not an immigrant”. She uses the words of Gisèle Halimi, also cited by the civil party during her pleading.
Béatrice Zavarro seeks to show that the accused came of their own free will and were not manipulated by her client, as many have claimed. “Was he violent? No. Was the door locked? No. Is he responsible for everyone? No”, she explains in rapid succession.
“Don’t come and tell me that he exercised a phenomenon of influence over these men!”
Béatrice Zavarro, lawyer for Dominique Pelicotbefore the Vaucluse criminal court
For her, Dominique Pelicot even voluntarily sought to be arrested, on September 12, 2020, when a security guard intercepted him in a supermarket in Carpentras. She relies for this on the police reports, in which they write that the septuagenarian, dressed in red shorts, was observed with “his phone at arm’s length, which he slips under his victim’s gray skirt”. “Where’s the discretion?” she asks. During his multiple hearings, Dominique Pelicot declared: “Thank you for taking this weight off my shoulders.” et “it was time for everything to end”she reports.
The defense lawyers also wondered why he had kept his famous hard drive at home, when he knew that a search was going to target him after his first arrest in September. This centerpiece of the file contained all the videos which led to the downfall of the accused. Besides the fact that“a collector never parts with his collection”Dominique Pelicot did not throw it away because he wanted, according to the lawyer, for it to be found by the authorities, to “put an end to his criminal action”. An explanation that leaves some defendants doubtful.
For the lawyer, it is difficult to humanize someone who was seen for weeks on unbearable videos. In addition to the rapes, the accused imposed “a form of humiliation” to his victim, as the president noted, by insulting her and dressing her in alluring underwear that she abhorred. In any case he has “the courage not to be a coward”believes Béatrice Zavarro, emphasizing that he is there every day and recognizes all of the facts with which he is accused. Addressing her family, whose only representative is Gisèle Pelicot, the lawyer concludes: “Keep in mind that first Dominic. The one who pampered you, cuddled you, pampered you and, I think, loved you deeply. Forget the one I pleaded for.” The person looks at her, sitting, with her head held high. Dominique Pelicot stares at the ground.
