The banner flew all week at the top of the ramparts in front of the Avignon courthouse: “Support for Gisèle, no behind closed doors. » In recent days, messages have multiplied on the walls of the city: “If it’s behind closed doors, it’s not legal” ; “Behind closed doors, exclusion of evidence of rape” ; “Who benefits from closed doors? » The debate ended up parasitizing the Mazan rape trial.
However, it was decided on the first day: during a trial for rape, according to article 306 of the code of criminal procedure (CPP), “the closed session can only be ordered if the victim who is a civil party does not object”. Gisèle Pelicot was opposed to it. Public trial, therefore.
The videos archived by Dominique Pelicot, the basis of the accusation, were to be broadcast in cases where the facts were contested by this or that co-accused. But the president of the Vaucluse criminal court, Roger Arata, judging these videos “indecent and shocking”after the broadcast of the first of them on September 19, finally ordered that they would be viewed behind closed doors, under article 309 of the CPP, which provides that “the president has control of the audience and direction of the debates” et “rejects anything that would tend to compromise their dignity”.
“A perception is subjective”
The decision was contested by Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers, who had requested a new debate on this essential point in their eyes. Because, in this very particular rape trial, where the words of the accused cannot be compared to those of the victim, who has no memory of the facts, only the videos can provide the contradiction.
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The debate took place on Friday October 4. “The vast majority of defendants plead that they did not have the perception of committing rape”thinking that Gisèle Pelicot was sleeping, but must have woken up or pretended to be asleep, explained Antoine Camus, one of the victim’s lawyers. “A perception is subjective, everyone can have a different one for the same scene. We must, here, at least debate the credibility of the perception reported by the accused of not having committed rape.said the lawyer again, recalling his client’s wish to “show everything”.
“For Gisèle Pelicot, it is too late, the damage is donehad stated before him his colleague Stéphane Babonneau, other counsel for the victim. The two hundred rapes she suffered while she was unconscious, the brutality of the debates taking place in this room, she will have to live with for the rest of her life. But if the publicity of the debates ensures that other women do not have to go through this, then this suffering that she inflicts on herself every day will have meaning. »
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