During his first visit to the Pelicot couple, at the age of 22, Charly A. undoubtedly followed the “normative script conveyed by porn on the internet”, according to an expert psychiatrist. But he then returned five times, and maintains that he believed in a libertine scenario.
Now 30 years old, Charly A. is one of four among the 50 co-accused in the Mazan rape trial to have responded six times to Dominique Pelicot’s invitation to come and rape his wife, at their marital home, after he had pumped her with anxiolytics.
But, between memory lapses, monosyllabic responses and silences, he persisted in his version on Friday, before the magistrates of the Vaucluse criminal court, in Avignon: until the end he believed that Gisèle Pelicot was pretending to sleep, according to the scenario presented to him by Dominique Pelicot, who had contacted him on the dating site coco.fr.
At the request of Ms. Pelicot’s lawyers, two photos of Charly A.’s first visit are displayed on the screens in the courtroom. Ms. Pelicot seems to be in a deep sleep and the young man penetrates her from behind. It is the night of January 20 to 21, 2016.
“The object to enjoy”
At the time, the accused was “clearly immature”explained in the morning Doctor Mathieu Lacambre, the expert psychiatrist who examined him, “with an autistic dimension and very marked shyness”. If he came, it was undoubtedly to follow the “normative script conveyed by porn on the internet”this porn that he then consumes in high doses.
In porn “everything is very standardized, normalized, the woman is the ‘object to be enjoyed'”explains the expert, recalling that one in two children has already seen porn when they enter middle school and that 20 to 30% of porn consumers are minors.
“The first mediating medium for entry into sexuality, from now on, is porn”insists the doctor, “quite worried about young adults today”. “But if we are not responsible for our fantasies, we are responsible for our actions”, adds the psychiatrist. And Charly A. returned to Mazan five times.
M. Pelicot “was insistent, enterprising”justifies the accused Friday morning. “I didn’t feel like I was bribing him.”retorts the husband, persisting in saying that all his “guests” knew his wife would be asleep “without his knowledge”.
Two videos of Charly A.’s second visit to Mazan are now broadcast on the room’s screens. December 7, 2018. “Today is my wife’s birthday.”specifies Dominique Pelicot, when asked by a lawyer.
“The act, not the intention”
In the first video, Charly A. imposes oral sex on Gisèle Pelicot, totally inert, while her husband holds her mouth open. In the second, broadcast at the request of the attorney general, he penetrates her from behind while Dominique Pelicot in turn inflicts oral sex on him.
“A hand is extended to you, by Ms. Pelicot through me”questions Mr. Stéphane Babonneau, one of the two lawyers for the civil parties: “this outstretched hand, can you take it and recognize that you have raped Madame Pelicot?”
“I recognize the act, not the intention”replies the accused: “No, I do not intend to rape madam.”
Charly A. will return once again in 2018, then three in 2020. The last, on the night of June 9 to 10, 2020, there will be three men invited by Mr. Pelicot to come and abuse his sleeping wife. But Charly A. did not meet the other two.
In total, 50 people responded to the offer from Dominique Pelicot, described as “conductor” of this extraordinary file, symbolic of violence against women and the question of chemical submission. 50 men recruited on the internet, most of them tried for aggravated rape, for which they face up to 20 years in prison.
After June 10, 2020, Charly A. will no longer respond to the husband’s requests. “The trigger was when he asked me to do the same with my mother”explains the accused.
In fact, at the insistence of Dominique Pelicot, who suggested that he replicate on someone around him the process he used on his wife Gisèle, the young man mentioned his mother. But he maintains that he never carried out the act, even if the main accused had given him anxiolytics to do so.
“I expressly confirm that I never, ever gave my mother medicine”. In any case, he is not being tried for that, but for six rapes of Gisèle Pelicot.
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