Anger, incomprehension, disgust, compassion, total denial. The companions of the accused who have been appearing since the beginning of September at the Mazan rape trial have experienced a range of feelings since the affair broke out. For Vanessa P., who “no more consideration for” his ex, the anger is cold. Like around fifty other men, aged 26 to 74, Quentin H., 34, then a prison guard, had responded to Dominique Pelicot's invitation to come and rape his wife at their marital home in Mazan. “When we see what he is accused of, we can doubt everything“, “he's a manipulator”added this auxiliary childcare worker to the bar, without glancing at her former partner.
“He was a wonderful person. He destroyed us”
“Manipulator”a qualifier also used by Émilie O., 33 years old, about Hugues M., 39 years old. Their union ended in November 2020, when the facts targeting Dominique Pelicot and her husband were revealed. Along the way, she discovered the multiple extramarital affairs of the man who shared her life. “I thought I was living a peaceful and fulfilling life, but I was wrong”. Since then, she has lived with the doubt of having been a victim of chemical submission herselflike Gisèle Pelicot, doused with anxiolytics and raped for ten years by her husband and the fifty men he had recruited on the internet.
A doubt that Cilia M. no longer has: between 2015 and 2018, her husband, Jean-Pierre M., 63 years old, and Dominique Pelicot, 71 years old, raped about ten times by reproducing on her the process used on Gisèle. “He was a wonderful person. He destroyed us”she testified, specifying that she “would never forgive” to her ex-husband, whose name she however kept and against whom she refused to file a complaint, for “protect (their) five children”.
Others still wonder, even if it means finding excuses to their ex-companions. “He was always respectful: when it was no, it was no. He never insisted (…) I absolutely don’t understand why he is here today”lamented Corinne M., already separated from her husband, Thierry P., at the time of the acts with which she is accused. Their relationship had been broken up by the death of their son in a road accident following which Thierry P. had fallen into alcoholism.
“I don’t see him as a rapist at all”
For her part, Samira T. is looking “answers to (his) questions for three and a half years” about her companion, Jérôme V., accused of having raped Gisèle Pelicot six times in 2020. But she did not leave him and she persists “support him” : “If we met, it’s not by chance, I had this mission.” “He had no reason to look elsewhere”added, in tears, the one who had nevertheless accepted his almost daily requests for sexual relations, “at 10 p.m.”taking intimate photos or even naked walks.
Going so far as to accuse herself, Hien B. feels responsible “for refusing all the time” the advances of her husband, Jean-Luc L., at a time when she was caring for her sick mother: “I think as a man he wanted to look elsewhere.” Like her, Sonia R., in a relationship with Patrice N. for 16 months, only wants to think about “the future”: “I support him and give him my total trust. For me there is a present and there will be an after, whatever it costs, whatever happens, whatever happens.”
“I don’t see him as a rapist at all. It's not him“ assured Lucie B. in court, Grégory S.'s common-law partner for seven years and from whom she is expecting a third child. After the fact, in 2017, “he told me that it was mainly a delusion of the husband and his wife, that she was drunk.”.
It's “beyond their understanding”
“In cases of sexual violence, those close to the accused themselves sometimes have difficulty imagining the violence, because it is beyond their comprehension”explains Véronique Le Goaziou, associate researcher at the Mediterranean Sociology Laboratory and specialist in sexual violence. “In some cases, they do not give credence to the facts reported by the victimsshe continues. They can't or won't believe it.” And to add: “Sexual violence does not only impact the perpetrators and their victims, (…) entire families suffer the consequences. (…) As for (to the companions), eThey are in a form of astonishment**”, she specifies.
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