New trial at the end of 2025 for 17 convicts who appealed

Dominique Pelicot, sentenced to 20 years in prison – a sentence with a two-thirds security measure (around 14 years) – for having drugged his wife Gisèle in order to rape her and hand her over to dozens of strangers in Mazan (Vaucluse), is not appealing, his lawyer announced Monday to AFP and Franceinfo. “Dominique Pelicot made the decision not to appeal the verdict rendered by the Vaucluse Criminal Court,” explained Me Béatrice Zavarro.

An appeal “would force Gisèle to a new ordeal, to new confrontations, which Dominique Pelicot refuses,” she added, specifying that for her client, aged 72, “Madame Pelicot is not and is not has never been his adversary. His lawyer estimated that rather than “running an unnecessary risk on appeal”, the facts could be reclassified and cause him to incur a heavier sanction, it was better “to be concerned about Dominique Pelicot and his state of health, his age » and possibly “try to obtain a reduced sentence from the courts”.

Despite this decision by the “conductor” of this decade of rapes imposed on the woman who became a feminist icon, in particular for having refused closed doors during the debates, a new trial will nevertheless take place, this time before a Court of Justice. Assizes composed of a popular jury, more than fifteen of the 50 co-defendants having already lodged an appeal.

On Friday, 17 defendants had already filed an appeal, two lawyers told AFP, but others could still do so on Monday, the tenth and last possible day for this process. The lawyers of around fifteen other defendants have already clarified to AFP that their clients have given up contesting the verdict. The General Prosecutor’s Office has not yet indicated at this stage whether it will appeal. He has five additional days to file incidental appeals.

If Dominique Pelicot believes, by not appealing, that “it is time to put an end to this judicially”, he has not finished with justice in other cases. Indicted by the “cold cases” unit, he could be tried for an attempted rape in 1999 in Seine-et-Marne, but above all a rape followed by murder in 1991 in Paris, that of a young real estate agent aged 23 years.