“It doesn’t make a distinction”: The Mazan rape trial enters its final phase!

After eleven weeks of hearings and the parade of around fifty defendants before the Vaucluse criminal court in Avignon, the Mazan rape trial enters its final phase on Wednesday with the start of the pleadings, of the civil parties to begin with.

Then will follow, from Monday, the highly anticipated indictment of the public prosecutor, scheduled for three days. The prosecution will have the difficult task of individualizing the sentences for each of the 51 accused, 51 men aged 26 to 74 years old.

If most are prosecuted for the same facts, aggravated rape of Gisèle Pelicot, previously sedated by her husband, for a decade, at their marital home in Mazan (Vaucluse), and face up to 20 years of criminal imprisonment, justice must take into account each person’s personal journey.

And in particular, at a minimum, differentiate between those who came only once to sexually assault the septuagenarian, and the “repeat offenders”: ten returned several times, up to six times for four of them.

Me Antoine Camus and Stéphane Babonneau, the lawyers of the civil parties, who have planned to plead over half a day on Wednesday, should dismantle in advance this line of defense based on the number of facts: as they have affirmed since the beginning of this trial, September 2, “rape is rape”.

A position also held by Gisèle Pelicot. “They all came to rape me, so there’s no distinction. Some apologize to me and I can look them in the eyes more, but they all committed a crime,” recalled Tuesday the woman who has now become a feminist icon, castigating a “macho and patriarchal” society and calling for this “what ‘we are changing our outlook on rape.’

Verdict on December 20

After the pleadings of Me Camus and Babonneau, which will be preceded Wednesday morning by the end of the questioning of Dominique Pelicot by the defense lawyers of his co-accused, the trial will be suspended for two days, to allow the public prosecutor to prepare his indictment .

The prosecution, represented by Jean-François Mayet and Laure Chabaud, did not specify how it intended to present its requisitions, from Monday to Wednesday: decrescendo, from the most serious facts to simpler cases, or crescendo, as is usually done. during assize trials, to end with the harshest sentences?

But it should normally begin with the case of Dominique Pelicot, common denominator of the co-defendants and orchestrator of this decade of rapes perpetrated on his ex-wife.

After the indictment, one thing is certain: it is Me Béatrice Zavarro, lawyer for Dominique Pelicot, who will open the defense pleadings on Thursday, November 28.

Me Zavarro will be followed by Me Patrick Gontard, who defends Jean-Pierre M.: the only one of the 51 accused not to have raped Gisèle Pelicot, this disciple of Dominique Pelicot had reproduced on his own wife the process of chemical submission of his mentor, to raping her around ten times between 2015 and 2018.

The pleadings concerning the 49 other accused will then last until December 13. There will then be one week left for the court’s five professional magistrates to deliberate, with a verdict expected on December 20 at the latest.

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