Mazan rape trial | The defense of the co-defendants pleads to escape from the “tornado”

(Avignon) Extricate yourself from the “tornado” triggered by the resounding trial of serial rapes in France on male-female relationships and refocus on each case: the lawyers’ first pleadings underline the difficulty awaiting the defense of the co-accused of Dominique Pelicot.

Read “Mazan rape trial: The challenge of defending the indefensible”

The “task is difficult”, because it is “difficult to oppose the pressure of public opinion”. “We are in the middle of it when our customers are spat on,” Ms.^e Raje Yassine-Dbiza, lawyer for one of these 50 men from all backgrounds, aged 26 to 74, against whom the prosecution requested 4 to 18 years in prison.

Because if Dominique Pelicot, against whom the maximum sentence of 20 years of imprisonment was requested, admitted to having drugged his ex-wife Gisèle without his knowledge for a decade to rape her and have her raped, unconscious, by dozens of men recruited on the internet, his co-defendants mostly assured that they had been led to think that they were participating in the game of a libertine couple.

A defense swept aside by the prosecution and which sparked numerous criticisms and demonstrations, even before the court in Avignon (south) where this extraordinary case has been tried since the beginning of September.

“It is above all the trial of the accused, it is neither that of the victim, nor that of the patriarchy and even less that of chemical submission,” pleaded M^e Yassine-Dbiza, hoping to “take away a few years of freedom” for his client, Andy R., against whom the prosecution demanded 11 years of imprisonment.

“Just barely”

M^e Fanny Pierre, who defends Quentin H., a 34-year-old prison guard, who once came to the Pelicots in Mazan (Vaucluse), described the “conditioning” that Dominique Pelicot would have exercised in the form of a “game of track” having led his client from the village parking lot to the marital bedroom, trapping him and delaying his “awareness”.

“He does not contest, he should have left, but he should be sentenced to a fair sentence,” said the lawyer, judging the 11 years claimed again by the prosecution to be excessive.

“This trial is beyond us. I am carried away by the Pelicot tornado,” President Patrick Gontard had already said on Wednesday. In any other context, “the prosecution would never have required 17 years” against Jean-Pierre M., who is accused of having sedated and raped his own wife with the complicity of Dominique Pelicot, he said. estimated.

“Let us not give ourselves the role of reformers of French society,” he told the criminal court, while the prosecution said it hoped that the verdict, expected at the end of December, would constitute “a message of hope.” .

“You will tell the women of this country that there is no fate to be suffered, and to the men of this country no fate to act. You will guide us in the education of our sons,” insisted Laure Chabaud, one of the two representatives of the public prosecutor.

“Absolute master who contemplates his work”

“This verdict, whatever it may be, may not be enough” to “stop a world where violence against women is endemic,” replied Ms.^e Olivier Lantelme, accusing the prosecution of having “missed this criminal matter” by demanding penalties that were too uniform and far too high.

The lawyer, who defends Patrick A., a sixty-year-old who claims to have gone to Mazan solely for a homosexual relationship, denounced a “Machiavellian” Dominique Pelicot who “sits as absolute master and contemplates his work from the dock” .

“Unless it gives good conscience to a very sick society, he [son client Patrick A.] deserves to go free”, not with 10 years as requested by the prosecution, but with a “single digit” sentence so that he does not return to prison after 15 months of pre-trial detention which have already severely tested him, pleaded M^e Lantelme.

“Let those who dream of 20 years go and live near Moscow, in Iran or North Korea. Respect what we are, humanists,” snapped the lawyer, in a courthouse in front of which feminist activists hoisted a banner “20 years for everyone”.