“The devil himself”: The Mazan rape trial is that of “an entire family destroyed,” says a Pelicot son

“The devil himself”: The Mazan rape trial is that of “an entire family destroyed,” says a Pelicot son
“The devil himself”: The Mazan rape trial is that of “an entire family destroyed,” says a Pelicot son

David Pelicot, one of Dominique Pelicot’s two sons, explained Monday that the Mazan rape trial was that of “an entire family destroyed”, imploring his father to “tell the truth” about the alleged actions against his sister Caroline Darian .

Gisele Pelicot (center) arrives with her lawyers Stéphane Babonneau (left) and Antoine Camus (right) at the courthouse for the trial of her former partner Dominique Pelicot accused of having drugged her for nearly ten years and having invited strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of , in , on November 18, 2024.

AFP

“For me it is the trial of an entire family which has been totally destroyed. And it is very complicated to explain to your children that they will not see their grandfather again. That’s already a form of suffering. But I repeat, we must understand that the Mazan trial is the trial of an entire destroyed family,” asserted, in a firm tone, the eldest of the siblings, 50 years old, before the criminal court.

“My family wants and will continue to fight and above all hopes that in the future, we can erase, make the man on my left disappear in our heads,” he explained, speaking of his father. , Dominique Pelicot, sitting in the accused box. Throughout his testimony, he described him as “this gentleman.”

“What I expect from this trial is that the decisions you will have to make will be commensurate with our suffering. May the men, these men who are behind my back (Editor’s note: the co-defendants), this man who is in this box, be punished for the horrors and atrocities that they committed on my mother,” explained David Pelicot.

Then he spoke directly to his father, looking at him: “If you still have a little humanity, do you hear? (I would like) you to tell the truth about the actions you had on my sister, who suffers every day and who will suffer all her life, because I think you will never tell the truth!”

“And on my son too,” he added, referring to the exchanges between Dominique Pelicot and one of his grandchildren, whom he allegedly asked to “play doctor”.

“Nothing at all!” his father replied.

“Relax, it’s me who’s talking, you’ll talk later!” David retorted, before adding, addressing the court: “he’s been putting on a show for two months… It’s unbearable!”

Previously, he had described “the tsunami” experienced by the family when, in the fall of 2020, they learned the news of this decade of rape on their mother Gisèle Pelicot, sedated, by her husband and the dozens of strangers who he recruited on the internet. And how in the space of two days the children had moved all the belongings “from this house of horror” where the events occurred, to Mazan (Vaucluse).

“We all fell from the 38th floor. Even today we ask ourselves questions,” then confirmed Florian Pelicot, the youngest of the siblings: “I have a lot of gratitude for still having my mother alive. But still a lot of misunderstanding about why he did that.”

“You said she was a saint, but you were the devil himself,” Florian told his father.

dac/ol/sp

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