In France, Dominique Pelicot, a husband who drugged his wife to have her raped by strangers for a decade, returned on Tuesday after a one-day exemption for health reasons, to the trial where he faces 20 years of imprisonment criminal, like his 50 co-defendants.
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The president of the criminal court of Avignon (south), Roger Arata, opened the 20th day of hearing of this emblematic trial of chemical submission and sexual violence suffered by women without providing details on the state of health of Mr. Pelicot, 71 years old.
He suffers from some “pain caused by the removal of the probe” then its replacement, his lawyer, Me Béatrice Zavarro, told AFP, specifying that a new medical appointment was planned “soon”.
The trial, which began on September 2 and is due to last until December 20, had already been suspended for two days in mid-September due to the absence of Mr. Pelicot, suffering from intestinal problems.
For ten years, from July 2011 to October 2020, the septuagenarian drugged his wife with anxiolytics and then raped her and had her raped by dozens of men recruited on the internet.
Alongside him, 50 men aged 26 to 74 are on trial in Avignon, most of them prosecuted for aggravated rape, acts for which they face 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.
After hearing the personality investigators on Monday, the court continued the study of the third group of seven accused on Tuesday by hearing the psychologist experts. Then it will be the turn of the psychiatric experts on Wednesday.
Among these seven men who should be questioned in court on Thursday is the case of Jérôme V., 46, a former employee in a food store, who came six times in 2020 to sexually assault Gisèle Pelicot at the couple’s marital home in Mazan (Vaucluse), in the south-east of France.
The six other accused are Simone M., 43 years old, construction worker after 12 years with the Alpine hunters, Adrien L., 34 years old, already sentenced to 14 years in prison for three previous rapes of his concubines, Thierry P., 61-year-old refrigeration craftsman, also indicted for possession of child pornography images, Jean T., 52 years old, former roofer, Redouane E., 55 years old, a liberal nurse, or finally Thierry P., 54 years old, ex-mason .
