Dominique P.’s trial in Avignon will be held in public, as the request for a closed hearing was rejected

The trial of Dominique P., a pensioner accused of drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her over a ten-year period, opened on Monday, September 2, in Avignon and will be held in public, the prosecution’s request for a closed hearing having been rejected.

“The debates will be public”announced Roger Arata, president of the criminal court of Vaucluse, composed of five professional magistrates, after a suspension of the session of around thirty minutes.

Through one of his lawyers, Mr.^e Stéphane Babonneau, the main victim, Gisèle P., 72 years old, with bobbed red hair, had made it known that she wanted “complete, total advertising, all the way through”Like her, the couple’s three children, all civil parties, also wanted the hearings to be public.

The public prosecutor had argued for a closed hearing, recalling that videos of the events, filmed by the husband, would be “necessarily viewed” and that “Not only would the publicity of the debates be dangerous, but [elle] would also undermine the dignity of people”. “It must not be a spectacle”some defense lawyers had also asked.

The trial, extremely rare in terms of the total number of accused, 51, aged between 26 and 74, will therefore take place in the presence of the public and the press, for four months, until December 20. The accused, one by one, gave their identity, profession and place of residence on Monday morning before the court.

Question of chemical submission

“My home, you know it, is prison”replied Dominique P., 71, the husband and main accused, a bit provocative. A robust man, white hair, dressed in a black t-shirt, he was not wearing an anti-Covid mask, unlike other accused, thirty-three of whom appear free.

Emblematic of the issue of chemical submission, this trial gave rise, even before its opening on Monday morning, to a demonstration by around fifteen members of two feminist collectives, Les Amazones d’Avignon and Osez le féminisme 84, in front of the Avignon courthouse. “Rapists, we see you, victims, we believe you”they chanted, dressed in black.

“It’s an extraordinary trial”affirmed, for his part, the lawyer of two accused, Roland Marmillot, because the facts “are part of a mental abnormality” of the husband, but also because he “wants to take fifty accused people with him in his madness”.

During the investigation, the husband admitted that, on certain evenings, he administered powerful anxiolytics to his wife, without her knowledge. Most often Temesta. Then he had her raped by men he had contacted on the Internet. He dated the first events to 2011, when the couple were still living in the Paris region, and then they continued until the fall of 2020, after they moved to Mazan in 2013.

“He is ashamed of what he did, it is unforgivable”his lawyer, M.^e Beatrice Zavarro, believing that we are in this case “in a form of addiction” : “My client’s line is that he acknowledges what he did and there has not been an ounce of dispute since the beginning.”

Feeling of “omnipotence” over the female body

Firefighter, craftsman, nurse, prison guard or journalist; single, married or divorced: the majority of the accused came once, ten times several times, sometimes up to six times. They do not suffer from any notable psychological pathology, according to experts, who have however pointed out their feeling of “omnipotence” on the female body.

Many still maintain that they only thought they were participating in the fantasies of a libertine couple. But “everyone knew” that Gisèle P. was drugged and unconscious, the husband always maintained. For the investigation, “each individual had free will” and could have “leave the premises”.

For men, recruited on coco.gg, a dating site accused of being a “den of sexual predators” and closed since June, the instructions were strict, so as not to wake the victim: no perfume or smell of cigarettes, and warm your hands by passing them under hot water.

Gisèle P. didn’t realize anything until she discovered everything, at the age of 68, when the investigation began in the fall of 2020, after almost fifty years of living together: her husband had just been caught in a shopping center filming up the skirts of customers. For her, the trial will be “an absolutely terrible ordeal”had confided M.^e Antoine Camus, one of her lawyers. She “will experience for the first time, on a delayed basis, the rapes she suffered for ten years”because she doesn’t have any “no memory”Dominique P., who participated in the rapes and filmed them, did not demand any financial compensation.

He is also implicated by the pole « cold cases » from Nanterre, in the Paris region, in two other cases: a murder with rape in Paris in 1991, which he denies, and an attempted rape in Seine-et-Marne in 1999, which he admits to, after being caught by his DNA.