When videos of the sexual assaults of which she was a victim are shown in court, Gisèle Pelicot looks away and prefers to speak to the young woman sitting next to her since the start of the Mazan rape trial. Sometimes even a smile lights up his face.
“He is someone who is very self-deprecating. There are times when there are funny little things that are said,” his “confidante”, Anne-Sophie Langlet, a lawyer at the of the Association for Mediation and Victim Assistance (Amav).
Every day since September 2, this professional who accepts the term “socio-legal assistant” sits alongside the civil parties, on the bench behind their lawyers, with the mission of providing them with insight into the legal procedure. . But also moral support during this trial which arouses interest throughout the world.
She responds “to the questions of Ms. Pelicot who sometimes wonders why a defense lawyer is saying that, what is his objective in giving such an argument”. Even if “for her, obviously, what is happening is difficult, we must also understand that it is part of the procedure and that therefore, we have to go through it.”
“There is no complicity, there is no friendship. It’s really always remaining present for her and letting her know that, if she needs to say anything, we can accept what she has to say. We will never be judged,” she explains.
But in this extraordinary trial, where 51 men appear before the Vaucluse criminal court for having raped Gisèle Pelicot, drugged and rendered unconscious by her husband who filmed everything, her human support for the family is coupled with a preventive role.
“We will also see her be and, through her reactions, be able to debrief. And, if there is something that alerts us, be able to suggest, trigger something. We have put in place psychological nets if she ever has to have them. need”, underlines this professional also trained in psychology and criminology, sometimes replaced by two other colleagues.
No information has so far filtered out concerning the possible psychological help received by Gisèle Pelicot who, at the beginning of September, had said speaking of herself that “the facade is solid but the interior is a field of ruins”.
– Neutrality –
Established in Vaucluse since the 1980s, Amav is one of 130 associations in France approved by the Ministry of Justice with the mission “to welcome and listen to any person who considers themselves a victim of a type of delinquency, to inform him of his rights, to support him in his legal procedures, to offer him psychological support”, explains its director Magali Blasco.
“We have victims who have a lawyer but who also want us to support them because they need oral support, because depending on the nature of the case, the lawyer is focused on the debates and not He doesn’t have the time to take care of his client either, and then because there is a relationship of trust that is already established upstream and as a result we are a bit of a link with his lawyers. “.
Unlike the latter, Amav employees must respect a posture of neutrality.
It was the Avignon public prosecutor’s office which asked the association at the end of August to support the civil parties in this trial. Anne-Sophie Langlet thus met Gisèle Pelicot only “a quarter of an hour before the opening hearing” on September 2. But immediately a “relationship of trust” was established.
“For Ms. Pelicot, it was important that there be someone with her, for example, at the time (of the broadcast) of the videos. She did not want her loved ones to be there, which could get along. And at the same time, it was hard for her to be all alone, because the lawyers are in front of her,” explains the lawyer.
– Benevolent presence –
She also gave the victims practical advice, such as breathing exercises or movements to “re-anchor yourself to the ground” in order to relieve stress and anxiety during the hearings.
Gisèle Pelicot, above all, decided “to write down what is wrong” to “immediately remove from her head what we have just heard and put it elsewhere”, confides Ms. Langlet.
Initially planned for the first two days of the trial only, this support will be provided, at the request of the civil parties, until the verdict expected on December 20.
“It is help that she greatly appreciates, because it is a caring presence, provided by a team of professionals who really show that assisting victims is a profession (…) These are people who are really very human, very competent and who certainly help our client get through this ordeal,” one of the civil party’s lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau, explains to AFP.
At the same time, an annex room, a “decompression airlock” with food and drinks, has been made available to the family who can go there each time the hearing is suspended.
It’s at these moments that Gisèle Pelicot lets go, reveals her “assistant”: “We provide her with sweets and she eats them every time she hangs. Like she’s never eaten any before…”
