So many horrors since September 2. And then the appeasement. “The criminal hearing is adjourned”said, Thursday, December 19, the president of the Vaucluse criminal court, Roger Arata. After three months and seventeen days, the courtroom emptied. The surroundings of the Avignon courthouse have been opened to traffic. The feared excesses did not occur. The several hundred feminist activists who came with oranges for the accused – they were confiscated by the police – sang their last songs, shouted their last invectives, then left with their signs.
Silence and calm returned suddenly. The verdict has been imposed. Fifty-one accused, fifty-one convictions – forty-nine for rape or attempted aggravated rape, two for sexual assault. All guilty.
In Avignon, the criminal court agreed with Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers: there is no “right to make mistakes, to violate without intention, to violate by accident, to violate involuntarily, to violate by stupidity, to violate by ignorance”as Stéphane Babonneau argued. “Everyone has, in a certain way, chosen”as Antoine Camus insisted, including those who said they were deceived by Dominique Pelicot: “Everyone made the choice to benefit from a body that no one could seriously fail to perceive as being incapable of expressing consent. Everyone has chosen to impose their vision of what consent is in sexual matters. The “manipulation” necessarily stops at the bedroom doors. »
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