In the Mazan rape trial, the public prosecutor on Monday requested the maximum sentence, i.e. twenty years of criminal imprisonment, against Dominique Pelicot for his “despicable actions”. For a decade, he drugged, raped and had his wife raped by dozens of men recruited on the internet.
“Twenty years is both a lot because it is twenty years of a life, whatever its age, it is not nothing. But it is both a lot and too little. Too little at the same time. considering the seriousness of the acts which were committed and repeated”, insisted Laure Chabaud, second representative of the public prosecutor to speak Monday morning before the criminal court of Vaucluse, in Avignon. “His responsibility for the acts committed is therefore full and complete,” she said.
This sentence was expected since Dominique Pelicot, 71, has never hidden his responsibility. In mid-September, he called himself a “rapist” and said: “I am guilty of what I did (…) I ruined everything, I lost everything. I must pay”.
>> Lire : “I am a rapist”, recognizes Dominique Pelicot, main accused in the Mazan rape trial
“The search for his pleasure is found in a desire to submit to his wife, to humiliation or even debasement through his actions, his words, of the person he cherishes most in the world,” accused the assistant prosecutor.
For ten years, from July 2011 to October 2020, the septuagenarian had hit his wife with anxiolytics before then raping her and delivering her, at their marital home in Mazan, in Vaucluse, to dozens of men, now elderly from 26 to 74 years old, whom he had recruited via the site Coco.fr, now banned.
“Out of the norm”
“Out of the norm”, it is with this notion that Jean-François Mayet, the attorney general, began his indictment, recalling that this trial “gave rise to 59 volumes of judicial information, containing thousands of minutes “. He also praised the “extraordinary work” of the investigating judge, Gwenola Journotwhich managed to close the procedure in 31 months.
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The attorney general had agreed with Gisèle Pelicot who waived the closed session required by the public prosecutor as a “protective approach” towards her: “This was without knowing your strength of character, undoubtedly increased tenfold by the violence of the crimes. (…) You were right, madam: the past weeks have shown the importance of broadcasting the videos, so that the shame changes sides,” he underlined, taking up the question. expression of the victim of these serial rapes.
Fifty co-defendants
The fifty co-defendants in this case are mainly being prosecuted for aggravated rape, acts for which they also face twenty years of criminal imprisonment.
Pulling the rug out from under arguments sometimes put forward by certain defense lawyers since the start of this trial on September 2, the prosecutor also assured that it was “not conceivable that Gisèle Pelicot could have voluntarily ingested these anxiolytics. Eighteen of the fifty-one accused, including Dominique Pelicot, appear detained. Thirty-two others appear free, the last, on the run, being tried in absentia.
During his last speech, on November 19, Dominique Pelicot, unanimously described as the “conductor” of this decade of repeated rapes against his now ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, explained that “subduing a rebellious woman was (his) fantasy”.
The verdict in this emblematic trial of sexual violence and chemical submission is expected no later than December 20.
>> Read also: Worldwide, a woman is killed by a loved one every ten minutes
Stéphanie Jaquet and the afp
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