Jérôme V., 46 years old, Jean T., 52 years old, Redouane E., 55 years old: the fifth week of hearing in the trial of a husband who drugged his wife to have her raped by strangers for a decade, tried with 50 co-defendants, began Monday, without the main accused, excused for the day for medical reasons.
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“He is unwell. He is scheduled to undergo a medical procedure this afternoon. I excused him for the day. (…) We will take stock of his state of health at the end of the day,” explained the president of the criminal court of Vaucluse (south), Roger Arata, at the start of the hearing.
The main accused, Dominique Pelicot, a 71-year-old retiree, had already undergone a medical examination on Friday, a day on which no hearing had been scheduled. His lawyer, Me Béatrice Zavarro, told AFP on Sunday that this examination “went well”, expecting that her client would be present on Monday.
The trial, which began on September 2 and is due to last until December 20, has already been suspended for two days in mid-September due to the absence of Mr. Pelicot, suffering from intestinal problems.
In his absence, the court therefore began to address the cases of a third group of co-defendants, seven out of the fifty men whom Dominique Pelicot had contacted on the internet, over ten years, from July 2011 to October 2020, to come and rape his wife, after he had drugged her with anxiolytics. Over the past two weeks, the cases of the first ten co-accused had been studied.
Most of them are being prosecuted for aggravated rape, and they face up to 20 years of criminal imprisonment. Eighteen of these accused, including Dominique Pelicot, appear detained. Thirty-two others appear free, the last, on the run, being tried in absentia.
While waiting for these seven men to be questioned, a priori on Thursday, in the presence of Dominique Pelicot, the court began Monday morning by dissecting their characters and their life paths, with the personality investigators. Tuesday and Wednesday, she should address their psychological and then psychiatric expertise.
Jérôme V., 46, a former employee in a food store, is one of the main defendants in this trial, the victim of which has become an icon in the fight against violence against women.
According to the prosecution, he is one of four men who came six times to the couple’s marital home in Mazan (Vaucluse) in the south-east of France, in 2020, to rape Gisèle Pelicot.
He would have gone through a difficult childhood, victim of “psychological and verbal violence” from his parents, explained the personality investigator, Elisa Scheidt. Described as a “pragmatic and utilitarian person in his relationship with others”, this enthusiast “of hiking and extra-marital relations” had a “frustrated sexuality, which led him to seek satisfaction elsewhere”.
In the morning, the court also heard expert opinions concerning three other defendants, including Jean T., 52, a former roofer, who came to the Pelicot home once, in 2018, described by those around him as “helpful, courageous and kind” .
Redouane E., 55, a liberal nurse, attacked Gisèle in 2019. He would have compensated for his “work-related stress” through libertinism and by viewing a lot of pornography.
Finally, Thierry P., 54, accused of having raped Ms. Pelicot in July 2020, is a former mason who had sunk into alcoholism after the death of his 18-year-old son in a car accident in 2016. “I “I absolutely don’t understand” how he could have done that, explained, in tears, his ex-wife on the stand, who is nevertheless trying to “rebuild” a relationship with him.
The three other accused who will be questioned this week are Thierry P., 61 years old, refrigeration craftsman, Simone M., 43 years old, construction worker after 12 years with the Alpine hunters, and Adrien L., 34 years old.
At the opening of the debates Monday morning, the president of the court indicated that a slot would be devoted Thursday afternoon to a contradictory debate concerning the broadcast or not of the videos of the rapes in the absence of the public and in particular journalists. A decision taken by Mr. Arata which deeply divides the parties to the trial.
