France mass rape trial enters final stage
The trial of a French man who for a decade drugged his wife to have her raped by dozens of strangers entered its final stages on Monday, with the final set of accused set to testify ahead of sentencing requests later in the week and a verdict next month.
The case of 71-year-old Dominique Pelicot has sparked horror, protests and a debate about male violence in French society. If convicted, he would emerge from the historic trial with a record as one of France’s worst sex offenders.
Since early September Dominique Pelicot has been in the dock in the southern city of Avignon along with 49 other men. Another defendant is still at large.
The victim, Pelicot’s former wife Gisele, has become a feminist icon by refusing to be ashamed and demanding the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.
“The shame isn’t ours to feel, it’s theirs,” she said.
For the past 10 weeks the court has considered the charges against the 47 defendants, and the last four men were due to take the stand on Monday.
Like the other accused, these four defendants come from everyday backgrounds. They are Nicolas F., a 43-year-old freelance journalist, Boris M., a 37-year-old employee in a transport company, Philippe L., a 62-year-old gardener, and Joseph C., a 69-year-old pensioner.
‘We are tired’
Previous defendants have claimed they believed they were taking part in a game played by a libertine couple, in which the wife pretended to sleep, and were unaware Gisele Pelicot had been rendered unconscious with drugs.
Like most of the accused, they will likely be confronted with the videos of their acts, filmed and meticulously catalogued and filed away by Dominique Pelicot.
Investigators counted around 200 instances of rape, most of them by her husband and more than 90 by strangers.
“We’re tired,” said Antoine Camus, one of the two lawyers representing 71-year-old Gisele Pelicot and her three children.
He said Gisele Pelicot was tired of hearing “the same explanations from the defendants” that she was the victim of rape “by accident” or rape “by error of judgement.”
Dominique Pelicot has confessed to being a rapist.
Of the co-defendants, only 14 have admitted the charges of aggravated rape, for which most of them face up to 20 years’ imprisonment.
The 35 others deny having raped Gisele Pelicot and maintain that they thought they were taking part in sex games.
Gisele Pelicot said she had never given her consent.
Her life was shattered in 2020 when she discovered that her partner of five decades had for years been secretly administering her large doses of tranquilisers to rape her and invite dozens of strangers to join him in their home in the village of Mazan.
Dominique Pelicot documented his actions with meticulous precision on a hard drive in a folder labelled “abuse”, leading police to track down 50 suspects beside the husband.
For years Gisele had strange memory lapses and other health problems and thought she might have had Alzheimer’s. Then police told her she had been drugged and raped for nearly a decade.
None of her abusers alerted the police. Dominique Pelicot was caught by chance when he was detained in 2020 for filming up women’s skirts in a local supermarket.
The couple’s two sons and daughter have regularly appeared at the trial to support their mother.
David and Florian were expected to testify Monday afternoon or Tuesday.
Their sister, who uses the pen name Caroline Darian, has already been heard during the first week of the trial but her lawyer said on Monday she would like to testify again.
Darian believes she was also drugged by her father. Naked photomontages of her had been found on Dominique Pelicot’s computer.
Once David and Florian are heard, Dominique and Gisele Pelicot will be given a final opportunity to speak. Prosecutors are then scheduled on Thursday and Friday to give their closing arguments and make their sentencing demands for the defendants.
The verdict is expected to be delivered by December 20 at the latest.
AFP
