“20 years is a lot, but it is too little given the seriousness of the repeated acts”, the maximum sentence required for Dominique Pelicot

At the Mazan trial, it was a lengthy indictment which began this Monday, November 25 before the Vaucluse criminal court, in Avignon and which could last three days. Unsurprisingly, a sentence of twenty years' imprisonment, the maximum sentence, was requested against Dominique Pelicot.

After eleven weeks of grueling trial for Gisèle Pelicot between confrontation with her attackers and popular fervor, the requisitions began this Monday, November 25 before the Vaucluse criminal court in Avignon.

The Advocate General, Jean-François Mayet opened the hearing by saluting the character “out of the norm” of this file, of the investigation and instruction procedure which gave rise to 59 volumes of judicial information and thousands of reports. “A extraordinary procedure of only 31 months, when judicial delays are often criticized (…)” deploring in passing “and audience time too short“. The representative of the public prosecutor emphasizes the extent of an investigation, faced with facts of a “unimaginable gravity.” At the height of this unprecedented file, the Advocate General therefore announces rextraordinary, very organized equisitions which will have to last three days during which the two attorneys general will take turns at the bar.

Her colleague Laure Chabaud then takes the floor to demand against Dominique Pelicot, “the keystone of the file (…), with a complex personality. It is no surprise that the Attorney General requested that the main accused be recognized guilty of the acts with which he is accused, requiring the maximum penalty:”20 years between four walls is nothing, it's both a lot and too little faced with the seriousness of the facts“.

The representative of the public prosecutor had mentioned the “confused family story (…) with troubled landmarks” of the husband of Gisèle Pelicot, a ppersonality structured on “perverse mode”, “a caring husband, a complicit grandfather, and a loving father capable of confidently inflicting unspeakable pain on his wife and family“.

“Gisele Pelicot attends from this hearing of the answers” recalled Laure Chabaud, in order to understand, she said, what reasons prompted “her life partner”to take action, driven by the search for “his own pleasure in a desire to submit, humiliate, even degrade the person he loves most in the world?“, putting forward a hypothesis: “maybe because it's easier to drug the woman in your life than someone else.” with sole intention d’“impose sordid unfulfilled fantasies on his wife”.

A sentence of 17 years' imprisonment was then requested against Jean-Pierre M., the first of the co-defendants, subsequently mentioned by the public prosecutor. The verdict which will determine the fate of the 51 accused will not be given before December 20.