At the Mazan rape trial, the Vaucluse criminal court on Friday authorized, in a spectacular turnaround, the broadcast to the press and the public of videos and photos of the facts, a decision widely criticized by many defense lawyers.
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New videos of the facts should also be broadcast as soon as the debates resume at the beginning of the afternoon, said Roger Arata, the president of the court, announcing the collective decision taken with his four assessors after a close debate two hours then a 90-minute deliberation.
The broadcast of these images will, however, be preceded by an “announcement allowing sensitive people and minors to leave the room”, underlined the magistrate. Since the start of the trial on September 2 in Avignon, the hearing room has been reserved for the court, the parties and the press, with the public in an adjoining broadcast room.
These broadcasts will, however, be “not systematic” and will only take place in cases “strictly necessary for the manifestation of the truth”, at the request of one of the parties, added Mr. Arata.
This turnaround was immediately described as a “victory” by Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers. “But a victory in a fight that should not have been fought,” said Mr. Stéphane Babonneau, according to whom French law has granted rape victims for more than 40 years the right to decide whether or not to publicize the debates.
On September 20, at the end of the third week of debates, President Arata had in fact banned the broadcast of the images to the public and the press, “considering that these images are indecent and shocking”.
Five days later, Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers again called for the lifting of these restrictions, in the name of the fight she is now waging against sexual violence. It was on their written conclusions that the parties debated at length before the court on Friday morning.
“Mob court”
Ms. Pelicot, raped for ten years by her husband, Dominique Pelicot, and by dozens of men whom he had recruited on the internet, after he had drugged her with anxiolytics, had opposed the huis closed at the opening of the debates on September 2.
The court initially ruled for completely public debates, until the decision of September 20.
“For Gisèle Pelicot, it is too late, the damage is done. The 200 rapes she suffered by more than 60 men who came to rape her in her bedroom while she was unconscious, the brutality of the debates taking place in this room, she will have to live with for the rest of her life. life,” Me Babonneau argued at the hearing.
“But if these same debates, through their publicity, prevent other women from having to go through that, then she will find meaning in her suffering.”
For his other lawyer, Me Antoine Camus, these videos “collapse the theory of an accidental rape”. “They show that these are rapes by opportunity and, beyond that, it was a question of degrading, humiliating, dirtying, it was in reality a question of hatred of women. No one denounced the facts, everyone contributed in their own small way to this banality of rape, to this banality of evil,” Mr. Camus added.
The counsel for several of the 50 co-defendants in this extraordinary trial, however, had fiercely opposed the presence of the public and the press during the broadcast of the videos.
“Justice does not need that to pass, what is the point of these nauseating projections? We were treated to a screening on a first case. “One film wasn’t enough?”, argued Olivier Lantelme.
“We do not have to move from a popular tribunal in the name of the French people to a mob tribunal. During the Revolution, the people were invited to the forefront to ensure that justice would be done. It was already a crowd,” thundered Mr. Paul-Roger Gontard.
The lifting of the closed session for the press and the public was also requested on Friday morning by the general advocate. Me Béatrice Zavarro, Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, who had previously declared herself in favor of the broadcast of the videos, this time did not speak out.
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