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“I dare the taboo word: acquittal”: despite popular emotion, apparently overwhelming videos, Dominique Pelicot’s banderillas and a harsh indictment, the lawyers of 5 new defendants at the Mazan rape trial pleaded for acquittal Wednesday in Avignon
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December 11, 2024 – 6:44 p.m.
(Keystone-ATS) Surveying the courtroom where the criminal court of Vaucluse (south) has been sitting since September 2, Me Louis-Alain Lemaire repeated that he would have “strongly wished for a trial behind closed doors, so that the debates would not have been polluted by the ‘vox populi'”, notably these demonstrators who “dirty the walls of Avignon” by displaying slogans such as “Twenty years for all”, the maximum penalty incurred by the accused.
The lawyer, who defends four of the fifty men accused of having raped Gisèle Pelicot, previously sedated by her now ex-husband Dominique at their home in Mazan, criticizes the public prosecutor for “unreasonable, inconsistent and above all unfair” requisitions. .
“What consistency? »
“Jacques C., against whom an act of penetration cannot be withheld: 10 years of imprisonment. Romain V. (came six times), 18 years old, barely two years younger than Dominique Pelicot. What consistency? Cendric V., 14 years old, Lionel R., 12 years old: what proportions? », thundered Me Lemaire.
Dominique Pelicot, who pleads guilty, has ensured since his arrest in November 2020 that all the men who came to Mazan were perfectly aware that he was drugging his wife without her knowledge, which virtually all dispute.
“Genius of manipulation”
“He who was able to cheat on his own wife for 10 years, could he not also have manipulated these men”, by making them swallow the scenario of a “swinging couple looking for a man?” », asks Me Lemaire.
“So yes, in the bedroom, they should have used discernment. For some, they got it quite quickly, others stayed, or even returned,” maintains the lawyer, for whom the “discernment” of his clients had been “abolished” by “this genius of manipulation who is Dominique Pelicot”.
Absence of “criminal intent”
And to consider that in the absence of “criminal intent”, the court will have to acquit them.
Charly A., 30, also visited the Pelicot couple six times. “In seven minutes 38 seconds, we swept away the file and laid down 16 years,” lamented his lawyer, Christophe Huguenin-Virchau.
“The only question worth asking: was he aware that he was committing rape, did he intend to commit rape? », asks Me Huguenin-Virchau, also answering in the negative. “So I dare the taboo word: acquittal. And I ask you to pronounce it.”
It is also “with fervor” that Me Caroline Beveraggi pleads for the acquittal of Patrice N., a 55-year-old electrician against whom 12 years of imprisonment were required.
“The madness of one man”
“So here’s another moron who commits a crime and agrees to be filmed? », Launches the lawyer. No, his client was “a thousand miles from imagining being in the presence of the biggest pervert of the decade” and from realizing that his wife was drugged.
“In Dominique Pelicot’s scenario, a sexual act is immediately necessary so that the guest does not have time to see Ms. Pelicot’s inertia. And there, it’s filmed, it’s in the box. Then when Patrice N. asks why she doesn’t wake up and Pelicot replies that he is giving her medicine, he tells her “You are seriously ill”, he takes his things and leaves”, relates the lawyer.
“The constraint is not his doing, he was totally unaware of it. This trial has no place in history. “It’s one man’s madness,” she added.
Since the beginning of the pleadings, the lawyers of 28 accused have called for acquittal for 15 who pleaded guilty and two who did not make a clear decision. Defense arguments are scheduled to conclude Friday. The verdict is expected on December 19 or 20.
