“It’s not me in the videos”, the incredible defense of this accused, professional firefighter

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“It’s not me in the videos, it’s my body but it’s not my brain”: one of the accused in the Mazan rape trial, a professional firefighter, expressed his bitterness on Wednesday, November 13, 2024. being, according to him, unjustly accused of having sexually assaulted Gisèle Pelicot.

Christian L., 55 years old, alias “Chris the fireman”, was however filmed in February 2019 with his uniform top bearing the logo “Sapeurs Pompiers Vaucluse” in the middle of a sexual act on an inert Gisèle Pelicot, knocked out with anxiolytics by his now ex-husband Dominique Pelicot.

“We just ran into the wrong person”

The accused, sporting a long black beard, estimated during his personality interrogation before the Vaucluse criminal court that he had been manipulated by Dominique Pelicot, presented as the “conductor” of this extraordinary affair.

“We just ran into the wrong person. He pretended to be a libertine when he is a sexual predator, a manipulative and lying pervert,” believes Christian L., who denies having intended to commit rape, like many others in their fifties. of men tried in Avignon since September 2.

The fifty-year-old rightly says he knows the codes of libertinage: “During a meeting, the man ensures the woman's safety, he must take care of her. That doesn’t mean that he decides everything,” he explains.

“Dragged through the mud” after “saving lives for 40 years”

One of Gisèle Pelicot's lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau, however, suggested that directly ensuring the latter's consent would undoubtedly have been a good idea.

Christian L., who is also accused of possessing child pornography imageswhich he disputes, also let out his anger at being “dragged through the mud” after “saving lives for 40 years” and his incomprehension at being held in pre-trial detention “for three years and 10 months”.

“When everything is over,” he said, “I think I will take a boat and join (Jacques) Brel and (Paul) Gauguin in the Marquesas,” the Polynesian archipelago where the Belgian singer and painter French people spent their last years.

Like most of the other defendants, he faces up to 20 years in prison. The verdict is expected on December 20.

With AFP

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