At the Mazan trial, before the Avignon criminal court, the pleadings are also an opportunity to pinpoint specific points in the case, or in the debates. This is how Me Camus, one of the two lawyers for the civil party, points out what he calls “courtroom mistreatment”. In other words, all this violence and other humiliations suffered by Gisèle Pelicot during the trial. This is also a demand of feminist associations and movements fighting against violence against women (often the same ones): to think about justice that is more respectful towards victims.
“There is rape and rape”, one of the many terrible sentences that Gisèle Pelicot had to hear, like so many other humiliations experienced during these long weeks of debates
CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP
“By opening the doors of this courtroom, what Gisèle Pelicot wanted to show as many people as possible was not so much rape in all its crudeness and horror as the way in which rape is still defended, in France, in 2024″ began Me Camus, adding that in addition, “not all rape victims have the chance to be carried every morning by applause in the hall of the courthouse and to come out again with a guard of honor to be encouraged to come back. ” No. “The vast majority of victims experience this ordeal alone, locked in the room with their rapists,” he continued in his pleading.
The imperative to be “a good victim”
So, a pornography actress could not be a victim of rape? »
“If our debates from the outside are a laboratory, then they surely give food for thought. » To think about “the line of defense” of the 51 accused first. “In terms of rape, in France, in 2024, victims still have to go through the almost obligatory phase of demonstrating that they are a “good victim”. As if there were good or bad victims of rape,” argued the lawyer, evoking, in particular, the “doubts” which crept into the debates: how Gisèle Pelicot did not notice anything ? Was she not conniving? Or worse, doubts about his “honorability”, rumors of libertinism. Was she libertine? Unfaithful?
“As if the fact for a woman to have a liberated sexuality outside the crime scene, perhaps even unbridled, would be disqualifying from occupying a seat on the civil parties’ bench,” adds Me Camus, driving the point home: “ so, a pornography actress could not be a victim of rape? »
The trial of the justice system
And it is finally, the trial of the judicial system that Mr. Camus makes by highlighting this “courtroom violence”. “Every institution, we know from the work of Michel Foucault, carries within it an element of violence. The judicial institution is no exception to the rule, that is obvious, and the violence it inflicts is necessary, inevitable, both on the side of the civil parties and on the side of the defense. But is it not precisely our role as auxiliaries of justice, having occupied the other side of the bar yesterday and being called upon to find ourselves there again tomorrow, to do our part of introspection? To recognize that there is, at least in the particular case of rape, violence that is sometimes unnecessary and gratuitous,” he ends by concluding that “some of these defense strategies no longer have their place in a judicial forum in France, in 21st century. If the defense is free, it also says what we are. »
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