It was his last speech before the verdict in the Mazan rape trial, expected Thursday. Dominique Pelicot on Monday asked his family to “accept his apologies”, while saluting the “courage” of his ex-wife, Gisèle, whom he had drugged for a decade to rape her and hand her over to dozens of men recruited on the Internet.
“I regret what I did, making people suffer for four years [la date de la révélation des faits, en 2020]I ask them for forgiveness,” declared Dominique Pelicot, 72 years old.
“The Total Truth”
Sitting in the glass box where he appeared alongside the 17 other detained defendants, out of 51 in total, he reaffirmed having told “the total truth” since the start of this trial which began on September 2 in Avignon. He also thanked the court which accepted that he could remain seated on a special chair due to his fragile state of health, which “could have been interpreted as casualness” but which was not, a- he assured.
He also had a word for his lawyer, Me Béatrice Zavarro, who enabled him not to “let go of the ramp”. Otherwise, “it would have been proof of cowardice towards my people and made it easier for the accused to agree with them. So I held on.”
20 years of criminal imprisonment
“I have been given titles, I rather intend to make myself forgotten,” he warned, feeling that he had “inner shame”: “I have a shell that I created for myself, otherwise we die in prison,” continued Dominique Pelicot. He explained that “the deprivation of no longer seeing your loved ones is worse than the deprivation of liberty”: “I can tell all my family that I love them. There you have the rest of my life in your hands,” he concluded towards the five professional magistrates of the court.
Find our file on the Mazan rape case
On November 25, the public prosecutor requested the maximum possible sentence against him for aggravated rape, i.e. 20 years of criminal imprisonment.
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