On September 9, Gisèle Pelicot had already asked that her children “not attend” this viewing.
AFP
At the Mazan serial rape trial, the examination of the facts alleged against the 51 co-accused makes it necessary to broadcast videos, crucial evidence. The victim, Gisèle Pelicot, is ready for it, but the process is very regulated.
Two initial photos, used to testify to the rape committed against Gisèle Pelicot between 2011 and 2020, are to be shown at the hearing on Wednesday afternoon at the request of defense lawyers.
“What matters to me is that these videos (and photos), which are irrefutable proof of the rapes and violence I suffered, are broadcast only in this room,” Gisèle Pelicot asked at the bar, adding that she “does not want the public to be informed of these images.” On September 9, she had already asked that her children “not attend” this viewing.
The broadcast will be cut off to the public
Although the closed-door hearing was refused from the first day of the trial, on September 2, by Gisèle and her three children, the debates will not be completely public, warned the president of the criminal court of Vaucluse, in Avignon.
“If compromising images are broadcast, exposing the nudity of a person,” the broadcast in the adjoining room, reserved for the public, will be cut, Roger Arata had specified, stressing in particular that students sometimes follow this trial.
It was by evoking these videos, meticulously archived by Dominique Pelicot, who for ten years drugged his wife with anxiolytics in order to rape her, unconscious, and to have her raped by dozens of men invited on the internet, that the prosecution had requested the closed hearing. Without success.
“The debates will lead us to examine these facts in detail at length, and, in our opinion, videos will necessarily be viewed,” said Attorney General Jean-François Mayet.
“The videos will speak”
“Not only would publicising the debates be dangerous, but it would seriously undermine the dignity of people,” and in particular that of Ms Pelicot, he argued.
“There is therefore a need, in our opinion, to avoid too wide an impact,” the magistrate continued, referring in particular to the European Court of Human Rights which protects the privacy of victims in the case of degrading images.
No member of the public should be able to attend the broadcast of the images, the main room of this emblematic trial on the issue of rape under chemical submission, being reserved for the judges, the civil parties, the accused – 32 of whom are appearing free – their lawyers and a few journalists.
Conditions that should satisfy the defense lawyers of the 50 co-accused (in addition to Mr. Pelicot), who had asked that this trial not become “a spectacle.”
Paradoxically, the defence of Mr Pelicot, the main accused, had argued for the broadcast of the images, believing that they would undermine the arguments of some of the men aged 26 to 74 who deny any rape and maintain that they believed they were participating in the scenario of a libertine couple in which Mrs Pelicot was pretending to be asleep and was consenting.
“The horror of rape”
“When the videos speak, they will speak. That is to say, we cannot hear that these are not rape scenes,” Mr. Pelicot’s lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, told the press at the beginning of September.
While Dominique Pelicot repeated again on Tuesday that he acknowledged all of the facts, only 13 of his co-defendants did the same, admitting to the aggravated rapes for which they face 20 years of criminal imprisonment.
For Gisèle Pelicot, the release of these videos will be a new nightmare. She confided that she did not have the strength to watch them for the first time until May 2024, three and a half years after the start of the investigation and the collapse of her world.
“Even if there will be extremely difficult times, she does not have to hide, and she does not have to be ashamed of what she has experienced (…), the shame must change sides,” declared Stéphane Babonneau, one of her two lawyers, to explain the choice of a public trial.
Ms Pelicot knows that “the publicity she has authorised for these debates will allow people to see what the crudeness and horror of rape is,” insisted Antoine Camus, her other lawyer, to AFP.
“These videos are unbearable, there is a desire to debase him,” he added.
But for him, it is thanks to viewing these images that Dominique Pelicot’s co-accused will have to admit the truth: “We’re going to do it once, twice, I hope we won’t have to do it 40 times, but she’s ready for it. But I hope that five or six times will be enough for a normally constituted brain.”
(afp)
