Small in size, discreet in appearance, Béatrice Zavarro could easily go unnoticed at the court in Avignon, in the south of France. Serene, she nevertheless has the immense responsibility of defending Dominique Pelicot, one of the worst sex criminals of recent decades.
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“I am alone facing the world,” explains the lawyer, with the calm and calm tone that has characterized her since the opening of the Mazan rape trial on September 2, before the criminal court of Vaucluse (south), where his client, 71 years old, and 50 co-defendants.
The ex-husband had recruited these 50 men on the internet to come and rape Gisèle Pelicot, after having drugged her, over a period of ten years at the couple’s home.
By agreeing that the trial be public, Ms. Pelicot, 71, raised a powerful wave of support for victims of rape and sexual assault.
“Conductor” of this extraordinary criminal case, Dominique Pelicot recognizes the facts and even wants the maximum sentence of 20 years of imprisonment. But he does not intend to fall alone: they “all knew” that they were coming to rape Gisèle Pelicot, he asserts.
They deny it, accusing him in return of having manipulated them.
An unusual situation therefore, where the lawyer of the main accused supports the arguments of the civil parties, at the risk of taking on an unexpected role of prosecutor.
“From the moment I defend a man who I am told is a liar, a manipulator, that he has fooled everyone, I must try to reestablish the truth,” Mr. Zavarro justifies himself: “my mission , is that we manage to understand, even if we hate him”, how he was able to carry out “these detestable facts”.
Me Zavarro has in the past defended Christine Deviers-Joncour in the Elf political-financial affair, and represented the father of Madison, a five-year-old girl kidnapped and then killed in 2006 in the south-east of France.
“Monster” or “monstrous” facts?
“She’s on a wire. Her position is far from obvious, but she holds it with great finesse. Do not reduce +the monster+ to his crimes, forget side B to recall side A, the two coexisting in this split personality,” recognizes Antoine Camus, one of the lawyers for the civil parties.
This term “monster”, the 55-year-old Marseillaise with round, red glasses refutes it, considering herself only as “the lawyer of someone who has committed something monstrous”.
And to recall that in “France, in a rule of law, everyone has the right to be defended”.
Although she has not received direct threats – she is absent from social networks – her secretariat receives numerous malicious calls. “You should be careful…”, an onlooker had whispered to him at the beginning of September, cryptically.
“I decided to defend Dominique Pelicot because he asked me to. He placed his trust in me,” explains the lawyer, paid via legal aid – a state-funded mechanism from which each detainee can benefit –, acknowledging having “underestimated the media impact” of this trial at the global impact.
It was one of her ex-clients who recommended her to Dominique Pelicot, when the two men met at the Baumettes prison in Marseille.
“Velvet Hand”
“Stubborn, very calm and courageous, because she has the wrong role,” according to her colleague Patrick Gontard, 45 years in the profession.
“She takes her files head-on but in a velvet hand,” according to Myriam Gréco, who then defended Madison’s murderer, describing “a little piece of woman who can pull out her claws, but without showing off.”
A character that seems to correspond to her personality: her patched lawyer’s dress or her dilapidated office in the heart of Marseille (south) testify to her refusal of fancy dress.
In Avignon, where she resides temporarily for the purposes of this emblematic trial of sexual violence, she lives on the outskirts, in a working-class neighborhood.
Twice a day, she walks the approximately two kilometers to the court, to “free her mind”, tirelessly accompanied by her husband, Édouard.
“She internalizes a lot, gives in little, is tough on evil, so I act as a clown on duty to perk her up,” attests her partner of 30 years, sometimes mistaken as her bodyguard because of his imposing size.
For Me Zavarro, this trial constitutes “an essential episode in the evolution of the subject of rape”, with “a first level which is Gisèle Halimi (Editor’s note: lawyer of this emblematic trial of 1978 which contributed to the recognition of rape as a crime) and a second level which will be Gisèle Pelicot”.
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