Tried for three months by the Vaucluse departmental criminal court, Dominique Pelicot and 50 men are accused of having raped his ex-wife under chemical submission. Among them, Lionel R., 44, admitted to having “never had the consent” of Gisèle Pelicot.
For more than three months, Liberation followed the Mazan rape trial at the Avignon judicial court. The main accused, Dominique Pelicot, is the architect of a sprawling system of sexual violence under chemical submission, within the framework of which he raped and had his then wife, Gisèle Pelicot, raped by strangers recruited online. Alongside him, 50 co-defendants took the stand of the Vaucluse departmental criminal court. Liberation draws up the profiles of these men, almost all of whom were prosecuted for “aggravated rape”, before the verdict expected by December 20.
Nom : Lionel R.
Age : 44 ans.
Profession : Seller.
Facts : A visit on the night of December 2, 2018.
Status : Appears free.
Sentence required: Twelve years of criminal imprisonment.
“Having never had the consent of Madame PelicotI can only note the facts,” admitted Lionel R. before the Vaucluse criminal court at the end of September. At the bar, the accused, former salesman at the Leclerc culture center in Carpentras – the one where Dominique Pelicot was arrested while filming under the skirts of customers in 2020 – first recounts “a happy youth”, “with loving parents who always took good care of [lui]». The family moved to Drôme when he was 11 years old. He tells “an incident”, occurred during his adolescence: sexual touching inflicted by the president of the local pétanque club. “I didn’t think it would impact me but it did.” As an adult, when he is fired after stealing from his employer, he develops an addiction to alcohol. One day, while watching pornographic videos, he is so drunk that he does not realize that his children are witnessing the images shown on the screen. A social investigation is then launched.
Father of three children, married at the time of the events but now divorced, Lionel R. says he started hanging out on the libertine site Coco to “look elsewhere for what he did not have at home [lui]»: “I was very demanding.” Met on the platform, Dominique Pelicot first asked him if he could be “open to a slightly original proposal”. “He tells me that she will sleep, he talks to me about sleeping pills or pills, one time he gives her, the other time she takes them, I don’t ask any more questions than that even if it’s not very very clear, because I am convinced that it is a game”, he explains at the bar. He is one of those who tried to apologize to Gisèle Pelicot. “I know my apologies won’t change anything, I can’t imagine the nightmare you went through, he told the audience, turning to Gisèle Pelicot. It’s horrible to be told that I’m part of this nightmare.”
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