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A psychiatric expert who took the stand on Thursday described three of those accused of raping Gisèle Pélicot, one of whom returned to rape the victim six times, as examples of “sacrifice”, including “submissive” personalities. would not correspond to the facts with which they are accused. An analysis that the prosecution's lawyers tried to dismantle.
Tried for rape before the Vaucluse criminal court, three of the accused in the so-called “Mazan rapes” case adopted a similar defense. Christian L., Charly A., Nicolas F. are examples of “sacrifice”, according to the psychologist expert who came to testify in Avignon on Thursday November 14. And, for these three men, the rapes they committed on an unconscious Gisèle Pélicot were “a game agreed upon between adults”.
“Strong feeling of self-sacrifice”, “strong tendency to put the feelings of others before their own”: Laurent Chaïb used the same words or almost to describe these three accused. Certainly, Christian L. “felt that something was wrong”, after this sexual relationship with a sleeping and unresponsive Gisèle Pélicot, at the couple's marital home, at the invitation of her husband. But he believes he came across “a manipulator”, continues the expert, heard on video, through a screen.
For Nicolas F., an independent journalist, “his personality is hardly compatible with the facts” with which he is accused, the psychologist then continues: “obsessive-compulsive type personalities avoid any behavior which could have a negative impact on others”, he explains.
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Returned to rape the victim six times
And the diagnosis is the same for Charly A., despite having come six times to the Pélicot home, in Mazan (Vaucluse). “Mr. A. is in a posture of self-denial but also of subjugation”, specifies the expert, “he is in a submissive posture facing a figure perceived as dominant”, that of Dominique Pélicot.
Aren't people with this type of personality precisely those who “often go into sectarian excesses?” asks Mr. Stéphane Simonin, lawyer for one of the other defendants of the week, Philippe L.. “All done”, responds Laurent Chaïb, referring to a “tendency to think after the fact”: “they then operate in automatic mode”, he explains. A diagram which could explain why Charly A. would have waited for his sixth visit to realize that “something was not working” in this supposed libertine scenario, according to the terms reported by the expert.
Is Dominique Pélicot this sectarian “guru”, this “manipulator”? Described as “the conductor” of this extraordinary case, where he recruited dozens of men on the internet to come and rape his wife, after he had drugged her with anxiolytics, he was not there to react on Thursday. Hospitalized in Marseille for the day, for health problems which had already caused a two-day suspension of the trial in mid-September, he should return to Avignon on Friday.
Rape plan to rape his mother
In the meantime, it was Gisèle Pélicot's lawyers who tried on Thursday to dismantle this apparent discrepancy between the facts and these three accused full of “sacrifice”. Referring to the 47 videos filmed by Dominique Pélicot and featuring Charly A., Me Stéphane Babonneau thus wondered whether the expert's conclusions would not be “incomplete”, due to lack of knowledge of the facts. And in particular of this plan to rape his mother, using the same process used by Dominique Pélicot on his wife, which this co-accused would have mentioned. “Faced with anxiety, he will have a tendency to submit,” says Laurent Chaïb, according to whom Charly A. could have seen in Dominique Pélicot “a sort of symbolic father”.
Recalling the zoophilic relationship project discussed by Nicolas F. with one of his interlocutors on the internet, Me Antoine Camus, Gisèle Pélicot's other lawyer, also tries to highlight the gap between the facts and the psychological portrait of the accused. “His personality does not protect him from his sexual urges,” the expert agrees.
Like many relatives of the accused, Robert L., father of Christian L., heard Thursday morning, in any case also thinks that his son “let himself be abused (by Pélicot), by weakness”, but also “by fatigue” from his job as a professional firefighter. “He’s not a boy like that, […] don't be too hard on him”, slips the octogenarian to the court before leaving the bar.
