“The search for his pleasure is found in a desire to submit to his wife, to humiliation or even debasement through his actions, his words, of the person he cherishes most in the world,” accused the assistant prosecutor.
Start of indictments at the Mazan rape trial: what sentences for Dominique Pelicot and the 50 co-defendants?
For ten years, from July 2011 to October 2020, the septuagenarian had hit his wife with anxiolytics and then raped her and delivered her, at their marital home in Mazan (Vaucluse) to dozens of men, now aged 26 at 74, whom he had recruited via the site Coco.fr, now banned.
These 50 co-defendants are mainly being prosecuted for aggravated rape, acts for which they also face 20 years of criminal imprisonment.
Pulling the rug out from under arguments sometimes put forward by certain defense lawyers since the start of this trial on September 2, she also assured that it was “not conceivable that Gisèle Pelicot could have voluntarily ingested these anxiolytics “.
Eighteen of the 51 accused, including Dominique Pelicot, appear detained. Thirty-two others appear free, the last, on the run, being tried in absentia.
During his last speech, on November 19, Dominique Pelicot, unanimously described as the “conductor” of this decade of repeated rapes against his now ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, explained that “subduing a rebellious woman was (his) fantasy”.
The verdict in this emblematic trial of sexual violence and chemical submission is expected no later than December 20.
