When psychiatrists come to testify in court, the hearing is not always clear or fascinating. It is sometimes sharp, technical and ultimately very abstruse. But this Wednesday, October 2, there is a little light emerging from the very accessible intervention of the psychiatrist who speaks before the Vaucluse criminal court. In 2021, she met the seven defendants who are being heard this week by the court. And she talks about Jérôme V., incarcerated for three and a half years now. “He told me: ‘I’m someone who doesn’t normally do any harm’.” confides the psychiatrist.
And that’s the whole story of this trial where we judge 51 people who, in their vast majority, are people who do no harm to anyone, “in normal times”. In their history, the “normal time”, it was this ordinary existence that they led every day with their partner, their children, their friends, their work colleagues, their neighbors. And then in the journey of these fifty men, there was this moment when, one day, their lives ceased to be normal. In an unknown bedroom where they performed sexual acts on a woman who was put to sleep by her husband.
Is this trial unusual or, on the contrary, very ordinary due to the frightening recurrence of the crime tried there, rape? Is this the trial of “toxic masculinity” ? Are these defendants representative of all men? So many questions now at the heart of an audience whose media and societal scale would not have been the same without Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to refuse to hold the debates behind closed doors. This 71-year-old woman wants everything to be said about what her husband and all these men did to her for ten years. And even that everything be shown, since on Friday she obtained the screening at the hearing, in the presence of the press and the public, of the videos of the alleged rapes, filmed by her husband.
Applause for Gisèle Pelicot
In this trial, the words are harsh, terrible, the videos grim, unbearable. And it’s dizzying to see Gisèle Pelicot, every day in court, hearing, stoically, the most sordid details about her trampled privacy. Noon and evening, she leaves the courthouse to the applause of around thirty women and men, who came to watch the trial in an adjoining broadcasting room. Sometimes, like last Thursday, she leaves with a bouquet of flowers.
Every day, she also receives letters of support from all over the world. “There was even one who arrived from Iraqi Kurdistan,” confides one of his lawyers. A victim who became an icon a little in spite of herself, without having asked for anything, almost silent in the media. And we can’t help but wonder in what state she will find herself in once this very trying trial has ended. Once the evening applause has stopped and the letters and flowers from France and elsewhere have stopped arriving.
Once these 51 men have been judged. Among them, there is of course Dominique Pelicot who, in a glass box, follows the debates attentively, sitting with a sometimes debonair appearance. He regularly expresses regret and asks for forgiveness from his ex-wife.. In his own way, Dominique Pelicot has also established himself as a sort of guarantor of the truth of the debates. Of its truth in any case.
After the questioning of each accused, the president gives him the floor. And each time, he castigates the ” lies “ or the “forgetfulness” of all these strangers to whom he delivered his wife, rendered unconscious by his care. While many say they thought they were coming for a “threesome” classic libertine, Dominique Pelicot retorts that everyone was informed that his wife would be put to sleep with sleeping pills.
Very diverse profiles
So who are these men aged 26 to 74, tried in Avignon? Everyday gentlemen in terms of their profession. An electrician, two salesmen, a journalist, two truck drivers, a carpenter, a plasterer, a soldier, a former alpine hunter, a firefighter, a site manager, a prison guard, a maintenance worker, a few retirees and several people unemployed…
What is most striking is the absence of a guideline allowing them to be put into a box. Alcohol? “I had been drinking the evening of the events”, explained at the hearing an accused, who became an alcoholic after the death of his son. “At the time, I was drunk from morning to night,” assured Simoné M. In total, around ten defendants declared alcohol dependence during the investigation. But in the vast majority, it was while sober that these men abused Gisèle Pelicot, following the instructions of the husband who did not wish to hand her over to people under the influence of alcohol.
Some defendants also had painful childhoods, with significant emotional deprivation and family violence. Thirteen, including Dominique Pelicot, said they had suffered sexual abuse in their childhood. But it is impossible to find a key in this area that would alone explain the acts. Because in the file, we also discover a plethora of accused who grew up in a family “loving” et “welded”.
Same observation for the sentimental life of the accused. A handful of them (six) were convicted of domestic violence. Without being brought to justice, some were described, during the investigation, as men who could be “impulsive”,” jealous “ or “angry”. With a certain detachment, Simoné M. admitted at the hearing to having once threatened his wife with an ax over an argument for a totally futile reason. But many wives have also described, before the judges, a husband “respectful”, ” soft “,“calm and helpful”,“romantic”,” worker “,“appreciated by all”.
“Overflowing” sexuality for some
Some accused declare having had a sexual “overflowing”, multiplying extramarital affairs. At the home of Jérôme V., investigators found a list of 89 women. “I needed to count my conquests. It was a challenge,” he explained. “It is often said that men have two brains. One, at the top, for thinking. The other one downstairs…”, learnedly observed Thierry Po., a libertine refrigeration engineer, without us really knowing if he was talking about his specific case or about men in general. But according to those close to them, all those implicated in the Mazan rapes did not have a sex addiction and did not compulsively consult pornography.
In fact, the only real thing all of the accused have in common is the fact that they frequented the dating site coco.fr, closed in June 2024 by the courts. Some went there occasionally, others spent their lives there. Some were looking for extramarital affairs, others for licentiousness.
It’s an axis of defense that comes up often. By going to the Pelicot couple’s house, many accused say that they thought they were meeting for a libertine game with “Madame’s agreement”. “On the spot, I thought she was pretending to sleep, that she was going to wake up and participate with us…” said one accused, who maintained his version even after the broadcast of a video making his argument completely inaudible.
“These videos make you crumblethe thesis of rape by accident, inattention or imprudence. What we see are rapes by opportunity,” had warned, before the screening, Me Antoine Camus, one of Gisèle Pelicot’s two lawyers.
The absence of intentionality at the heart of defense
Many defendants today claim to have acted without intending to commit rape. Even if they concede that at no time did Gisèle Pelicot give them her consent. “But her husband was there! “, they defend themselves by claiming not to have imagined that Dominique Pelicot could act in this way without the agreement of his wife. The consent of the husband, the only key to taking action. The consent of a man given to other men.
“This is how it happens in libertinism,” pleaded certain defendants, recognizing the still overwhelming weight of the masculine in this supposedly liberated practice.. “In libertinism, in 98% of cases, it is the men who give the directives, who say what is going to happen. That’s why, that evening, I trusted Mr. Pelicot.” explained Thierry Po.
“In libertine encounters, it is the men who speak because they are protective. The women are waiting”, added Redouane E., without specifying whether that night, in Mazan, while embracing the inert body of a woman transformed into a sex toy, he had the feeling that this husband, filming with his phone, was from protective type.
In this trial, there are also men who confide their regrets, their shame, and today express to Gisèle Pelicot an empathy that they had not expressed during the interviews with the psychiatrist in 2021. An empathy that is sometimes still very self-centered. ” I beg your pardon “, murmured Redouane E., turning to Gisèle Pelicot. “Because of this story, I no longer dare look my mother in the eyes,” he immediately added, seeming to take refuge, like others, in a posture that is still largely victimized.
“I am a branded man. If after that, I am not able to change, I will never change,” indicated Jérôme V., ensuring that he was doing important work with his psychologist in detention.
A mass effect
Men capable of change? “When I get out of prison, I would like to create or join an association to tell all men that we must respect the consent of women,” assured Thierry Po., without managing to completely convince the audience. Because it is often with caution that words of remorse from certain accused or promises to be a different man in the future are received. Perhaps because of the group, mass effect. And the difficulty of managing to maintain a unique perspective on each of these men, without drowning him in an indistinct crowd of individuals cast as irredeemable perverts, given the unthinkable seriousness of the acts committed.
Judge each individual for what they have done, not a group. This is the challenge for justice which must also remain impervious to everything that is said outside the courtroom. Despite everything, it is impossible to completely avoid this question of the group, of the collective. Because it was also by watching videos sent by Dominique Pelicot showing men who had already committed the act that others decided to do it in their turn.
On Friday, Mr. Camus requested that videos be shown for all the accused. “This is how we will measure the contribution of each person, on their own small scale – without anyone denouncing the facts – to this monstrosity which lasted ten years for Gisèle Pelicot. To this banality of evil, this banality of rape. »
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Defendants who face twenty years of imprisonment
The investigation. In September 2020, Dominique Pelicot was arrested while filming under the skirts of customers in a supermarket. On his computer, the police found 20,000 photos and videos. This is how they will discover that, from July 2011 to October 2020, he invited men to abuse his wife, Gisèle, who was put to sleep by him. Seventy-two men are said to have gone to the couple’s home but only fifty were formally identified. The vast majority of men went there once but four went there six times.
The trial. Fifty-one men, including Dominique Pelicot, were tried in Avignon from September 2 to December 20, before the Vaucluse criminal court, made up of five magistrates. Eighteen defendants appear in custody: sixteen in connection with this case, two for other charges. Thirty-three accused, released, appear free. All defendants face twenty years of criminal imprisonment.
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