Dominique Pelicot, the main accused in the Mazan rape trial, was “found guilty” Thursday for having drugged his ex-wife Gisèle with anxiolytics for a decade before raping her and delivering her to dozens of strangers recruited on the internet .
He is sentenced to 20 years in prison.
“Mr. Pelicot, you are found guilty of aggravated rape against the person of Gisèle Pelicot,” declared the president of the Vaucluse criminal court, Roger Arata, specifying that his sentence will be announced to him a little later in the morning devoted to the verdict of this trial which has become a symbol of the fight against violence against women.
Dominique Pelicot, 72, stood up and listened to the president attentively but without expressing any particular emotion.
He was also found guilty of recording and possessing images taken without their knowledge of his wife, daughter and daughters-in-law.
The whole family is present in the room.
Monday, during his last speech, he asked his family to “accept his apologies”, while saluting the “courage” of his ex-wife, Gisèle, now 72 years old.
“I have been given titles, I rather intend to make myself forgotten,” warned the man who was described by several lawyers for the co-defendants as “the ogre of Mazan”, a “wolf” who would have trapped their clients by making them believe in the scenario of a libertine couple where the wife pretends to be sleeping. His daughter Caroline, who only refers to him as her “progenitor”, estimated at the bar that he was “one of the biggest sex criminals of the last 20 years”.
He then 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 it, you have the rest of my life in your hands,” he concluded towards the five professional magistrates of the court.
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