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Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to the maximum sentence, 20 years in prison, for the aggravated rapes against his ex-wife Gisèle Pelicot, in the Mazan rape trial which ends today, Thursday 19 December, in Avignon. None of Dominique Pelicot’s co-defendants were acquitted at the ongoing trial in Vaucluse. The first sentences imposed on the 50 co-defendants are, for the moment, significantly lower than those requested by the prosecution, which had set a minimum sentence of ten years for the rapes.
“Mr Pelicot, you are found guilty of aggravated rape on the person of Gisèle Pelicot,” declared the president of the Vaucluse criminal court, Roger Arata. Dominique Pelicot, 72 years old, stood up and listened to the judge attentively, but without expressing particular emotions. He is also found guilty of collecting images of his wife and daughter without their knowledge. The whole family is present this morning in the courtroom at the Palace of Justice in Avignon.
The husband’s “apology”.
The shock maxi-trial on the “Mazan rapes” has torn the veil on “chemical subjugation”. The victim, Gisèle Pelicot, was impassive as she listened in court to the “apologies” of her ex-husband who for ten years drugged and stunned her so that she could be raped by dozens of men whom he summoned over the Internet. Among the 50 accused of sexual violence, only fifteen expressed apologies towards Gisèle, whose story has been seen around the world since the start of the trial in September.
“I would like to begin,” said Dominique Pelicot, “by paying tribute to the courage of my ex-wife. I beg you”, continued the man who thought up and organized the rapes between 2011 and 2020 by dozens and dozens of people recruited on the web, “and the rest of my family, to accept my apologies. I regret what I did, for having made them suffer for four years (from the date on which the facts emerged, ed.), I ask them for forgiveness.”
Gisèle, also 72, listened without batting an eyelid, even when her ex-husband declared, in his last opportunity to speak in court, that he had told “the complete truth” in these 14 weeks of proceedings. Stating that his only desire is to “be forgotten” due to the “shame” he feels inside himself. “I built myself armor,” he said, “otherwise you die in prison.”
