Evoking in the main accused, 71 years old, a “personality structured in a perverse mode”, the magistrate estimated that he was in “search of his own pleasure” via “submission, humiliation, even debasement of his wife.
Dominique Pelicot, who never hid his responsibility, calling himself a “rapist”, however seemed touched by the sentence required against him. “He is dejected, it is never very easy for a man to hear that a 20-year sentence is required against him,” testified his lawyer, Me Béatrice Zavarro, during a recess of the hearing.
Concerning Caroline, the daughter of the Pelicot couple, convinced of having also been the victim of rape or sexual assault at the hands of the man she only calls her “progenitor”, Laure Chabaud estimated that if “the “justice does not aim to leave a victim on the sidelines”, no element was found allowing these “sufferings to find a legal translation”.
– After Gisèle Halimi, Gisèle Pelicot –
Opening the prosecution's indictment Monday morning, Jean-François Mayet, deputy public prosecutor of Avignon, estimated that “the issue” of this trial “is not a conviction or an acquittal” but to “fundamentally change relations between men and women.
This question of “male domination over women” is a subject “far from being unknown to everyone”, he recalled, drawing a parallel with the Aix-en-Provence rape trial of 1978, where another Gisèle, the lawyer Gisèle Halimi, had rape recognized as a crime.
Coincidentally, the start of this indictment coincided with the international day for the fight against violence against women, “one more symbol” noted by Antoine Camus, one of the two lawyers for the civil parties.
And these requisitions were closely scrutinized as the main victim, Gisèle Pelicot, 71, achieved the status of feminist icon after refusing to allow the trial to take place behind closed doors, “so that the shame changes sides”, and as The echo of this trial, covered almost universally with 138 accredited media including 57 foreigners, has gone beyond the borders of France.
“It’s a lot of emotion,” Ms. Pelicot said Monday morning, once again very applauded on her arrival at court.
After addressing the case of Dominique Pelicot, the prosecution requested a prison sentence of 17 years against Jean-Pierre M., the only accused not to be prosecuted for sexual assault on Gisèle Pelicot but on his own wife.
Then, before beginning to address in the afternoon the 49 other individual cases of this extraordinary trial, Laure Chabaud preemptively undermined the arguments of the defense, rejecting the supposed “implicit consent” or “consent by proxy ” that Ms. Pelicot would have given: “We can no longer, in 2024, say 'since she said nothing, she agreed', it's from another age”.
Could the co-defendants legitimately believe that they were participating in the scenario of a libertine couple, where the wife would pretend to be sleeping? Were they “manipulated” by Dominique Pelicot? Was their discernment impaired at the time of the events, as the lawyers of 33 of them further suggested on Wednesday?
No, replied the magistrate, noting in particular that “if the videos show a certain insistence, no pressure, no blackmail, no threat is perceptible”. As for the physical state of Ms. Pelicot, “inert” in the videos, it is “particularly striking”, she underlined, and it left no doubt about her inability to give consent to anything.
– “Of nuance” –
If most of the accused are prosecuted for the same facts, namely aggravated rape of Gisèle Pelicot, and therefore also risk 20 years in prison, individualization of sentences is mandatory. And the prosecution should undoubtedly distinguish repeat offenders – ten men came several times – from those who came only once to Mazan.
“There needs to be nuance in the sentences, we can only understand that by following the trial,” Brigitte Jossien, 74, a retired store manager, told AFP who arrived at 5:45 a.m. Monday. to attend the trial.
For the feminist collectives who put up a banner on the ramparts in front of the court, the request was very clear: “20 years for everyone”.
The indictment is in principle scheduled for three days but it could end as early as late Wednesday morning. The floor will immediately be given to the defense lawyers.
Dominique Pelicot's lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, will open the ball. Then his colleagues will follow one another until December 13, the verdict being expected on December 20 at the latest.
