An opinion shared by many people on social networks. “Only 20 years old with all the misfortune he has sown?,”He would need life imprisonment”, “You can drug, rape and have your wife raped for more than ten years and only spend 20 years in prison?”
It turns out that in France, 20 years is the maximum sentence that can be imposed on a person who commits rape. “Simple” rape is punishable by a maximum of 15 years of criminal imprisonment and aggravated rape (if there is an aggravating circumstance such as the fact that the victim is under 15 years old, that the victim has a disability, or when the rape is committed against a vulnerable person or by an ascendant) is punishable by a maximum of 20 years. It is only in the event of the death of the victim that a sentence of 30 years of criminal imprisonment can be requested, according to the French daily La Voix du Nord.
Non-cumulative sentences
Unlike in the United States, sentences are not cumulative in France: it is not because Dominique Pélicot is found guilty, for example, of 100 acts of aggravated rape that he could be sentenced to a sentence of 100 times 20 years.
This maximum sentence was expected as Dominique Pelicot, 71, never hid his responsibility. In mid-September, he described himself as a “rapist” and said: “I am guilty of what I did […] I ruined everything, I lost everything. I have to pay.”
“The search for his pleasure is found in a desire to submit to his wife, to humiliate or even degrade, through his actions, his words, the person he cherishes most in the world,” accused the assistant prosecutor.
For ten years, from July 2011 to October 2020, the septuagenarian had hit his wife with anxiolytics before then raping her and delivering her, at their marital home in Mazan, in Vaucluse, to dozens of men, now elderly from 26 to 74 years old, 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 ““It is not possible 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. The verdict in this emblematic trial of sexual violence and chemical submission is expected no later than December 20.
