The President of the Criminal Court Roger Arata rightly clarified that it was rare for an investigating judge to testify on his own case at the bar of a Criminal Court or Assize Court. But judge Gwenola Journot, 41, who investigated the Pelicot case from November 2020 to June 2023 (31 months and as many large red volumes) was cited at the request of one of the defense lawyers. As a result, some of his colleagues, as well as the prosecution and the civil parties, took advantage of his presence to question him.
“I don’t see what I could contribute other than what I wrote,” she said in the preamble, referring to her 370-page indictment order. But we were able to glimpse some behind the scenes of the investigation of his titanic case, for which the Avignon Courthouse has made arrangements. “I was presented with fewer files, especially since I was already working at the time on around thirty settlements of scores in Cavaillon.” To lighten his workload (90 files on his desk) judges were sometimes involved.
Gwenola Journot thus explained that the investigation of the Pelicot case “could have lasted ten years, there was material” but that she decided to stop at a given moment “so that Mr Pelicot could be judged within a reasonable time “. A feeling of unfinished business? asks one of Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers, like these videos taken on a highway rest area, or these more than ambiguous photos of her naked daughter Caroline. “Yes, there is frustration, but we did the best we could.”
As for Caroline Darian: “Mr Pelicot was questioned, he always denied abuse”. At the beginning, she continues, Pelicot mentioned around thirty visitors to Mazan. “Fifteen who participated, fifteen who watched.” But the study of his computer equipment, where 20,000 photo and video files were stored, led to 60-70 suspects. “A significant number of photos were blurred, so the corresponding individuals were unidentifiable. Mr Pelicot tried to remember their names and profession.”
In vain. “But I still decided to distribute them to all police stations and gendarmes: a gendarme was thus able to identify an additional suspect.” The videos? “The central element of the file”. Three months to watch them… “I selected the entire spectrum of sexual acts – she names them all, almost recites them – except for the images where Mrs. Pelicot is alone with her husband, and consenting.
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It was initially questioned whether the defendants had a real-life connection. We quickly understood that no
Judge Gwenola Journot
The Avignon PJ and the judge’s office can only “manage” ten people in police custody at the same time, “we were not able to carry out the simultaneous arrest of the fifty defendants”. This was therefore organized in waves, and we can guess that the publicity of these raids benefited some visitors to Mazan who must have vanished into thin air… He was then questioned about possible shortcomings, in particular hearing from Doctor de Mazan who greatly supplied Pelicot with various sleeping pills. He sheltered himself from the investigators behind medical secrecy: “He would have done the same thing in my office.”
Also, the libertine site, Coco, now closed, from which other strings and individuals could have been pulled: “We wondered, at the beginning, if the accused had a link between them in real life. We quickly understood that it wasn’t.” And for the identification of other visitors: “All requests to the operator remained unanswered.
Finally, the lawyer for one of the co-defendants asked the judge if she was convinced that none of the defendants had been drugged by Pelicot before their act. The first person in custody claimed that this was the case and that he had woken up in his car parked in Mazan without the slightest memory of what he was doing there. Others continued on the same theme. “They do not appear sedated or drugged in any of the videos,” the judge replied. Moreover, this defense argument was widespread in detention, where detainees communicated widely with each other.” So why not isolate them? asked the lawyer.
– This would have made extractions complicated and there are barely enough prisons to isolate them all.”
Belgium
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