Present on almost every day of the hearing, Gisèle Pelicot faced all 51 defendants. On the first day of the trial, 35 had denied the facts requesting acquittal, due to lack of intent.
This argument of intentionality was widely taken up over the course of these first ten weeks of trial, highlighting the rules in the world of libertinism, in which the man would be the holder of his wife's consent, others have argued hypothesis of having been drugged by Dominique Pelicot.
“We are tired. We are very tired on Gisèle Pelicot's side to hear almost systematically the same explanations from the accused on the legal ground of intention, (…) to hear that she was the victim of rape 'by accident ', rape 'by error of judgment', rape 'against the heart'”, protested Me Antoine Camus, one of the two lawyers for the civil parties, Ms Pelicot, her three children and her grandchildren .
Some of the accused wanted to apologize to Gisèle Pelicot, an apology that was inaudible to the civil party.
