The Mazan rape trial is entering its final stretch with the requisitions. This Monday, November 25, the public prosecutor requested the maximum sentence of 20 years of criminal imprisonment against Dominique Pelicot, accused of having raped and committed the rape of 50 men to his wife, sedated, for ten years. “20 years is a lot at the same time, because it is 20 years of a life, whatever its age. But it is also too little considering the seriousness of the acts which were committed and repeated”underlined Deputy Prosecutor Laure Chabaud, asking “that at the end of his sentence (the accused) be subject to a review with a view to a possible detention measure”.
“He is shot, it is never very easy for a man to hear that a 20-year sentence is required against him”assured his lawyer, Me Béatrice Zavarro, during a recess of the hearing on Monday.
The public prosecutor does not accept the accusations of the couple's daughter
Concerning Caroline, the daughter of the Pelicot couple, convinced of having also been a victim of rape or sexual assault by the man she only calls her “progenitor”Laure Chabaud on the other hand estimated that if “justice does not aim to leave a victim on the sidelines”no element was found allowing these “sufferings of finding a legal translation”.
“The issue […] is to fundamentally change the relationships between men and women,” the public prosecutor said at the start of his indictment. “This trial is shaking up our society in our relationship with others, in the most intimate relationships between human beings. To make our needs, our emotions, our desires understood and above all to take into account those of the other”, declared Jean-François Mayet, the first of the two representatives of the prosecution to speak.
He considered that the stakes of this trial “to facts of unimaginable gravity” Who “shake up our society” was not “not a conviction or an acquittal”, warning that the requisitions “will be taken into account in the necessary individualization of the sentence” of the 51 accused, these men between 26 and 74 years old, most of whom are being prosecuted for aggravated rape. “The facts and the personality of each accused were taken into account even in our requisitions”, he added, while specifying that “justice needs calm and peaceful debate. This extraordinary trial leads to extraordinary requisitions.”
“You were right ma’am.”
Jean-François Mayet declared that the heart of this trial was that “male domination over women” a subject “far from being unknown to everyone”. He thus drew a parallel with that of the Aix-en-Provence rapes of 1978, where lawyer Gisèle Halimi had rape recognized as a crime.
He also welcomed the «courage» and the “dignity” of Gisèle Pelicot, main victim of these approximately 200 repeated rapes, half of which attributed to her ex-husband, giving her credit for having decided to lift the closed doors of the hearings and allowing some of the approximately 20,000 photos and videos to be broadcast taken without his knowledge by Dominique Pelicot. “You were right ma’am: the past weeks have shown the importance of these broadcasts, so that shame changes sides,” he launched, taking up the argument put forward several times by Gisèle Pelicot.
Updated at noon with more details.
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