Mazan rape trial: 20 years in prison for Pelicot

The Vaucluse criminal court sentenced Dominique Pelicot to the maximum sentence of 20 years of criminal imprisonment and declared all of his 50 co-defendants guilty on Thursday morning in Avignon, thus closing four months of the Mazan rape trial, which has become a symbol of violence against women.

“Mr. Pelicot, you are found guilty of aggravated rape against the person of Gisèle Pelicot,” declared without surprise the president of the court, Roger Arata, to the man who drugged his now ex-wife Gisèle for a decade with anxiolytics, to make her sexual object and deliver her to dozens of men recruited on the internet.

No surprise

Then, again without surprise, he sentenced him to the maximum possible sentence for aggravated rape, i.e. 20 years of criminal imprisonment, with a two-thirds security period, thus following the request of the prosecution in its indictment at the end of November .

For the 50 co-defendants, men aged 27 to 74, none of whom were acquitted, the magistrate then listed the sentences imposed one by one. At 10:30 a.m., the sentences ranged from three years’ imprisonment, two of which were suspended, to 13 years’ imprisonment.

At the end of November, the public prosecutor had requested 10 to 18 years’ imprisonment against 49 of the co-defendants, tried for aggravated rape or attempted rape, and four years in prison against the last one, prosecuted for “touching” Gisèle Pelicot.

These requisitions were more severe than the average sentence for rape in France, which was 11.1 years in 2022, according to the Ministry of Justice.

180 media present

“Christmas in prison, Easter in zonzon”, “shame has changed sides. And justice?”: the collages of the feminist collective Amazones d’Avignon, in the night, summed up the pressure on the five professional judges of the court.

“Rape concerns women all over the world, that’s why the whole world has its eyes on what is going to happen,” a representative of this movement explained to AFP, while 180 media outlets, including 86 foreign , were present on site to cover the event.

After three and a half months of hearings, the Vaucluse criminal court left to deliberate Monday morning around 10:30 a.m., after giving the floor one last time to the 51 accused.

A shock wave

The couple’s three children, David, Caroline and Florian, arrived together at the court around 8:30 a.m., pushing through a crowd of spectators, activists and journalists. Their mother Gisèle arrived separately and smiling, to cheers, a little after 9:00 a.m., accompanied by her two lawyers.

This decision, in an Avignon courthouse under heavy police protection, was closely scrutinized, in France and abroad, as this trial caused a shock wave, since its opening on September 2, becoming emblematic of the questions around gender-based and sexual violence and more broadly male-female relationships.

It is “the hour of truth” for the regional daily La Provence, Libération hoping on its front page that the judges will deliver “a verdict for the future”, which will make it possible to break with “the banality of rape”.

In her indictment, Laure Chabaud, one of the two representatives of the public prosecutor’s office, hoped that the court’s decision would overcome the fate of these defendants and send “a message of hope to victims of sexual violence.”

Conversely, the defense lawyers made around thirty requests for acquittal for their clients who, according to them, were “manipulated” by the “monster”, the “wolf” or even the “ogre” Dominique Pelicot. So without success.

“Thank you Gisèle”

The tension was palpable in the courtroom, where a large police force had been deployed. Found guilty, several of the 32 accused who appeared free should in fact sleep Thursday evening behind bars.

Ready for this eventuality, most had arrived at the hearing with a bag containing some clothes, noted an AFP journalist. In tears, one of them hugged his partner for a long time before entering the room.

Unusual in terms of its duration, the number of accused, but above all the atrocity of the alleged acts, this trial has already made history. In the ranks of feminist associations and civil parties, there is great hope of seeing it change mentalities regarding rapes, attempted rapes and sexual assaults reported each year by more than 200,000 women in France.

This affair also made it possible to embody the scourge of sexual violence, through the figure of Gisèle Pelicot, who from an anonymous victim transformed over the weeks into a feminist icon urging women “to no longer be silent” so that “shame changes sides”.

“Thank you Gisèle,” proclaimed a banner hung on the ramparts of the old town of Avignon on Thursday morning, facing the court.

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