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Mazan rape trial: Dominique Pelicot, manipulator or not? The two theses clash
Dominique Pelicot, champion of manipulation, as his brother says? Or, on the contrary, was he laying his cards on the table by inviting men to rape his wife, who was drugged without her knowledge? In Avignon, the question continues to agitate the Mazan rape trial. The septuagenarian has been on trial since September 2 for having drugged his wife Gisèle Pelicot, from whom he is now divorced, then having raped her and having her raped for 10 years by Dozens of men, around fifty of whom appear alongside him before the Vaucluse criminal court. And two theses clash. The first, defended by around thirty defendants, describes a manipulative man who would have made them believe in a “scenario libertine” in which Gisèle Pelicot, consenting, would pretend to sleep then wake up during the acts. This is also the opinion expressed Monday by François Amic, expert psychiatrist, who came to submit his report on the five accused whose files are being studied this week in Avignon.And Tuesday morning, Joël Pelicot, retired doctor and Dominique’s older brother, added grist to their mill by affirming that his younger brother had developed, from childhood, surrounded by “attentive, loving parents “, “an ability to adapt one’s speech to better manipulate and to lie as one goes along.” On the bench of the civil parties, Gisèle Pelicot, usually impassive, stamps her feet. She wishes to “deny a certain number of facts”, says one of her lawyers, Me Antoine Camus. “Of all the witnesses, you are the only one to paint a very unflattering portrait of Dominique Pelicot. They all say they only saw this famous A side, that of an extremely friendly man, whereas for you, he has always been manipulative, jealous, possessive”, asks Me Camus. “That didn’t stop me from loving him, he was the little brother, we put him through his faults”, replies Joël Pelicot, sobs in his voice, according to whom “the civil parties also let themselves be fooled a little.” “It’s a lie to say that everything was going well. Every Thursday, we had chores and we got beaten up if we missed them,” Dominique replied. , looking back on his childhood. – Mitigating his responsibility – The second thesis, forcefully proclaimed by Dominique Pelicot, is therefore that he did not manipulate anyone. “Everyone knew” that he was drugging his wife without her knowledge and everyone was aware that they were committing rape, he keeps repeating. For Gisèle Pelicot, who has become an icon of the fight against chemical submission, who, surprisingly, agrees with her ex-husband on this point, the accused who claim to have been manipulated are in fact only seeking to mitigate their responsibility. Also heard on Tuesday, Pierre P., the husband of Caroline, the couple’s daughter, is also opposed to the thesis of manipulation, regretting “not having seen” that Dominique Pelicot was not the “formidable” father-in-law that he seemed to be. At the end of the hearing, a witness who had refused the proposal of Dominique Pelicot to go to the Pelicot home, in Mazan, a small town in Vaucluse at the foot of Mont Ventoux, also came to affirm that the ex-electrician was not hiding his game on the controversial libertine site coco.fr., banned since.”He asks me to do gardening work and in exchange, he offers me his wife. I proposed to him one Saturday morning, he told me no, because he gave him a pill to put him to sleep, and told me that he drugs his wife and offers her to men very often. I tell him that it’s rape and that I don’t agree,” says Jérôme B., a 42-year-old truck driver against whom no charges have been brought. Heard in the process, Cyril F.. explains that he also briefly exchanged online with Dominique Pelicot: “Until he told me that his wife would take pills and that she would surely be asleep when I arrived.” was a young man who talked nonsense, I didn’t think at all that someone could drug his wife and I cut it short”, he says, without being able to specify whether Dominique Pelicot had told him that he administered the sleeping pills in secret or if Gisèle took them herself. “In any case, he didn’t tell you ‘Come on, we’re going to participate in a rape’?” asks Me Nadia El Bouroumi, who defends another accused. “Oh no,” replies the 48-year-old civil servant.siu/ol/dch
