Mazan rape trial | The challenge of defending the indefensible

After several weeks of hearings, the Mazan rape trial entered its final phase on Wednesday with the highly anticipated pleadings of the lawyer of the main accused. The one nicknamed “the devil’s advocate” tried to show the human side of her client by recalling the violence he suffered in his childhood.

The crowd was there from dawn on Wednesday in front of the Avignon court, where the “Mazan rapes” trial has been taking place since the beginning of September, certainly the most followed of the year in France. . The day promised to be decisive, with the pleadings of the defense and in particular those of Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, a woman with a frail silhouette and a piercing gaze.

“I’m not expecting anything,” she told journalists as soon as she entered.

“What can she defend? He is an indefensible man,” argued a curious person, Corinne Lombardi, who has followed the hearings in the public since the beginning and who had arrived early in the hope of having a place in the room.

Dominique Pelicot is accused of having drugged Gisèle Pelicot, to whom he was married at the time of the events, with anxiolytics, then raped her and had her raped by several dozen men recruited on the internet. All from 2011 to 2020.

Dominique Pelicot admitted the facts from the start of the trial, during his interrogation. “I am a rapist like those in this room,” he admitted.

The scenes of violence that he filmed and meticulously cataloged allowed the police to identify 50 men, who appear today alongside him. The public prosecutor asked for sentences ranging from 4 to 20 years in prison.

“For each of us, whatever our role in the case, there will be a before and an after,” noted Laure Chabaud, the prosecutor in the case.

At the start of the public prosecutor’s indictment, a stage during which sentences are proposed to the judge, lawyer Jean-François Mayet declared that the heart of the trial was that of “male domination over women”, a subject “far from to be unknown to everyone.

“Profound changes in the system of thought cannot be made in one day,” said his colleague, General Counsel Laure Chabaud. This trial is a stone in the building that others will continue. »

Devil’s Advocate

At the start of the trial, Gisèle Pelicot assured that despite its “solid facade”, inside, it was “a field of ruins”.

Last week, the couple’s children had very harsh words towards their father during their final hearing. “You will end up alone like a dog,” his daughter, Caroline, told him. Several photos of her naked and sleeping were found in the files of the accused, who to this day denies having taken these photos.

“Despite myself, since September 2, I have been the devil’s advocate,” said Béatrice Zavarro, beginning her plea on Wednesday.

In interview with The Press at the end of the day, Béatrice Zavarro confided that this title “totally” indifferented to her.

Calm did not leave her as she recited her indictment, methodically unfolding the colorful sheets containing her notes. She recalled the childhood of Dominique Pelicot and his traumas. A violent father figure, “an authoritarian, tyrannical man” who imposed violent relationships on his mother before his eyes.

Then the rape, allegedly inflicted on him by a nurse at the age of 9, while he was hospitalized for a head wound. Then another rape, which he witnessed and in which he was allegedly forced to participate on a construction site when he was 14 years old. A scene that the lawyer exhumed in the harshest details.

According to Béatrice Zavarro, these events made Dominique Pelicot a “split man”. There is the good Dominique, perceived by his children, before the affair, as this “good, caring, generous” father. Then there is “the other Dominique”, for whom “only his desire counts”.

Between references to Freud’s psychoanalysis as well as more modern theories, the lawyer sought scientific explanations for the actions he committed.

Ambiguous position towards the victim

Béatrice Zavarro refused to name the co-defendants, preferring to classify them by groups. “There are the impatient people who contact [Dominique Pelicot] to make an appointment during the day, the curious who want to see what is hidden behind the ad, the machos who think that since he said yes for his wife, it is yes [pour avoir un rapport sexuel alors qu’elle est endormie]. »

The lawyer flatly denied the possibility that they could have been under the influence of the organizer of the nightly meetings.

Towards Gisèle Pelicot, the victim, who was present at the trial and who was applauded when she arrived and when she left, Béatrice Zavarro took an ambiguous position.

“I have deep respect for the dignity you have shown, Madam,” she said.

However, she did not fail to make some comments about herself, saying that she had focused too much on “her role as a grandmother” and not enough on “her role as a woman” when she arrived in Mazan. Béatrice Zavarro then assured that Dominique Pelicot had wanted to protect her from pain by administering sedatives.

The most confusing moment came at the end of the argument, when the lawyer repeated lines from one of the poems that her ex-husband wrote for her in prison. “I know that one day we will see each other again and we will hopefully be able to talk about all this again. »

The trial continues with closing arguments from the lawyers of the 50 co-defendants. On Monday, the public prosecutor requested a 20-year prison sentence against Dominique Pelicot. Announcements of the sentences will arrive no later than December 20.