PARIS – “Mr Pelicot, you are found guilty of aggravated rape on the person of Gisèle Pelicot”. Thus Roger Arata, president of the Criminal Court of Vaucluse put an end to the Mazan rape trial. In addition to Dominique, sentenced to the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, the court also handed down sentences of 2 to 15 years in prison for the other 50 defendants, accused of raping the woman at her husband’s invitation.
For over a decade, the main accused, now 72, drugged his wife and, taking advantage of her unconscious state, raped her and recruited strangers to rape her as well. In addition to the violence, the man was found guilty of having collected images of his wife and daughter without their knowledge.
The trial was peppered with various statements, some of them paradoxical. Among these, a few days ago, those of Dominique who praised his ex-wife: “I would like to begin by paying homage to the courage of my ex-wife”, or those of the numerous defendants reported by the newspaper Liberation: “Since the husband had given me permission, for me she accepted”, “I only thought about my own pleasure” or “If I had to rape someone it wouldn’t have been a 57 year old woman”.
During the trial, Gisèle became a feminist icon, courageously facing a public trial open to the press. She did it despite the terrible traumas she has to deal with, because “shame must change the field and no other woman should suffer what I suffered”. Today she was welcomed in court by great applause and the chorus of “Gisèle, Gisèle” chanted by the crowd who came to support her.
The president of the Assemblée Nationale, Yael Braun-Pivet, also expresses her thanks to Gisèle Pelicot and writes in X: “From now on, thanks to her, the world is no longer the same”.
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