After three and a half months of hearing and three days of deliberation, the five magistrates of the criminal court will announce, from 9:30 a.m., the fate that they have decided to reserve for these men aged 27 to 74, from all walks of life. social workers, who came to sexually assault Gisèle Pelicot, previously sedated by her then husband, Dominique, at their home in Mazan (Vaucluse).
The decision, which will be rendered in an Avignon courthouse placed under heavy police protection, will be closely scrutinized, in France and abroad, as this trial has caused, since its opening on September 2, a shock wave. , becoming emblematic of issues surrounding gender-based and sexual violence, chemical submission, consent and more broadly male-female relationships.
Unless there is a surprise, the main accused, Dominique Pelicot, 72, who admitted to having drugged his wife Gisèle with anxiolytics for a decade to rape her and hand her over to dozens of strangers he recruited on the internet, should receive the sentence. maximum of 20 years in prison requested by the public prosecutor. But his lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, still hoped Wednesday, to AFP, that the court “departs a little from the quantum proposed by the prosecution“and take into account”the life path not chosen“of its client, and in particular these”traumas” that he allegedly suffered during his childhood, including rape at the age of nine.
The great unknown lies in the sentences his co-defendants will receive, the court necessarily having to individualize its sanctions, and in the acquittal from which some may or may not benefit. At the end of November, the public prosecutor had requested 10 to 18 years of imprisonment against 49 of them, tried for aggravated rape, and four years of prison against the last one, only prosecuted for “touching” on Gisèle Pelicot. These requisitions are more severe than the average sentence for rape in France, which was 11.1 years in 2022, according to the Ministry of Justice.
