“How in France, in 2024, can a woman still suffer what was inflicted on Gisèle Pelicot for at least ten years?” asked lawyer Antoine Camus at the bar.
The end of a grueling trial. After eleven weeks of hearings and the hearing of 50 defendants before the Vaucluse criminal court, in Avignon, the Mazan rape trial entered its final phase, Wednesday November 20, with the start of the civil parties' pleadings. “By this almost political gesture of renouncing the closed session”on September 2, at the opening of this trial, Gisèle Pelicot “invited all of society to ask questions, to change mentalities, for a future that would finally break with a violence that we wish for another age”estimated Antoine Camus, the first to plead at the end of the morning.
“How in France, in 2024, can a woman still suffer what was inflicted on Gisèle Pelicot for at least ten years?”protested the lawyer. “How in France, in 2024, can we find at least 50 men, but in reality 70 individuals, within a radius of 50 kilometers, to come and benefit from this inert body, without consciousness, which we would believe to be dead?” he continued.
“The debates established that everyone, upon leaving this house of horror, understood that others had gone before.”
Antoine Camus, lawyer for Gisèle Pelicotbefore the Vaucluse criminal court
“No one saw fit to alert the police: there have been more than 200 rapes in ten years”noted Antoine Camus, referring to the concept of “banality of evil” of the philosopher Hannah Arendt, deploring that all the accused had “contributed to this monstrosity”.
The lawyer also returned to the questions that were asked of the victim, relating to “signals” that she should have seen, according to the defense, concerning the rapes she suffered while she was drugged with anxiolytics. “How can we imagine that danger comes from within, at the very heart of a home that we think is secure and loving?”he questions.
He also regrets an almost obligatory passage during these weeks of trial: making the “demonstration that we are a good victim. As if the fact for a woman to have, outside the crime scene, a liberated sexuality, perhaps even unbridled, would be disqualifying from occupying the bench of civil parties”, he observed. Gisèle Pelicot was questioned about her sexuality on several occasions and 27 intimate photos of them were shown, at the request of the defense.
“He was even criticized for not crying enough. A way of suggesting that there would be suspicious connivance [avec son ex-mari]“estimates the lawyer, referring to the questions asked the day before by the defense. For him, these questions were akin to a “form of courtroom abuse”.
Stéphane Babonneau, who also pleaded on Wednesday, criticized the defendants' line of defense “who admit to having penetrated Gisèle Pelicot without having obtained her consent”. “But the conclusion they draw from these findings is that she was not the victim of rape at their hands”he noted. They actually plead “a simple and banal error of assessment, for which they hold Dominique Pelicot responsible”.
“The consent of Gisèle Pelicot was never a subject of concern for the accused. Their sovereign contempt is reflected in the criminal file and in the comments made at this bar.”
Stéphane Babonneau, lawyer for Gisèle Pelicotbefore the Vaucluse criminal court
He then looked at the profile of the accused, questioning the analysis of certain experts at the bar who define a sexual attacker according to certain criteria. “We hear that men accused of rape are appreciated, integrated, do not have the profile of rapists,” observes the lawyer for the civil party. “The rapist is the man who commits rape. That’s all. No more, no less”.
A little earlier today, the main accused, Dominique Pelicotwas heard one last time and apologized to his ex-wife and their children. “I didn’t imagine it would hurt so much for them”he said. “You will end up alone like a dog!”her daughter Caroline Darian shouted at her, at the other end of the courtroom, red with anger.
After the first pleadings, the trial will be suspended on Thursday and Friday, to allow the public prosecutor to prepare its indictment. The prosecution has the task of individualizing the sentences of Dominique Pelicot on the one hand, and of the 50 co-defendants on the other, aged between 26 and 74 years old. If most are prosecuted for the same facts, aggravated rape of Gisèle Pelicot, and therefore face up to 20 years of criminal imprisonment, justice must take into account the personal background of each person.
