Gisèle Pélicot, victim of a hundred men whom her husband contacted on the Internet offering to rape her while she was sedated, followed the trial on Wednesday morning from her seat in the Avignon court hearing the case. She said nothing. Accompanied by her daughter, she watched and listened to the testimony of one of the accused: the only one among the 50 seated in the courtroom who did not rape her. Jean-Pierre Maréchal, considered her husband’s disciple, refused to participate in the sexual assaults that Dominique Pélicot organised in his home. However, he did do so with his own wife, using the same methods and inviting the person who had instructed him in chemical submission to participate in up to 12 rapes. Gisèle said nothing. In the afternoon, however, she exploded and her testimony ended in shouting.
The victim, who has become a symbol of the feminist struggle in France, took the stand when the hearing resumed after lunch. Photos and videos of the rapes were to be shown, but Gisèle opposed their being shown in the adjoining room (where some of the public is following the trial). “These are proof of the rapes I have suffered. But the public must not be shocked. I will not show these videos in public, they are unbearable.” She had also requested that her children not be present in the main room during the broadcast. She then responded to some of the insinuations she had heard from the defence of some of the accused: “At no point did I give my consent to Mr Pélicot, or to these men behind me. At what point does a man decide for his wife? Since I arrived in this courtroom, I feel humiliated. I have been called an alcoholic, an accomplice to Mr Pélicot. I have heard everything, it takes a very high degree of patience to bear everything I have to hear.”
The tone became more heated as the testimony progressed, especially when the short duration of the recordings Dominique Pélicot made of his wife being raped was discussed. The victim even confronted one of the defendants’ lawyers about what could or could not be considered rape depending on how long it lasts, as the lawyer suggested last week. “Is rape a question of time? Three minutes? An hour? It doesn’t matter how much time has passed, they came to rape me!” she exclaimed forcefully. “I have the feeling that I am the guilty one, and that the 50 behind me are the victims!” Gisèle protested, very indignant.
The victim also referred to the only one of the accused who did not rape her. “Jean-Pierre Maréchal, in this courtroom, is the only one who knew how to say no. I am not judging what he did to his wife, but he is the only one here who knew how to say no. But there are 50 men behind him who did not even ask themselves the question. What is wrong with their brains? For me, they are degenerates.” One of the accused in the courtroom, according to the media present, was irritated by the use of the word and the tone used. But Gisèle Pélicot raised her voice again. “Yes, they are degenerates! I am not used to getting angry, but, honestly, enough is enough!”
Jean-Pierre Marechal, alias Rasmus The man who was mentioned in the sexual forums he frequented when he was 53 years old, is the man the victim referred to. Maréchal, however, was a kind of disciple of Pélicot. He gave the same tranquilizers to his wife, with whom he had been married for 30 years and had five children, and raped her up to 12 times with his instructor. On Wednesday, as Pélicot himself had done the day before, he pleaded guilty without minimizing his actions, but he sought to attenuate them by breaking down a biography riddled with abuse, incest and traumatic experiences that, according to his account, would have prevented him from discerning between good and evil at times. A difficult argument to defend. Not even the victim wanted to share it: “Not all men would have acted in the same way, we must not put them all in the same bag.”
“I just wanted to rape my wife”
Maréchal’s defense is seeking to prove that it was a ruse by Pélicot. But he did not fully accept the argument on Wednesday: “I am responsible for what I did,” he said. He made it clear, however, that if he had not frequented Coco.frnone of this would have happened. According to his account, once contact was established with the main defendant, Pelicot first tried to convince him to rape his wife, as he did with the other 51 defendants. Maréchal decided not to do it. “I just wanted to rape my wife,” he explained in court on Wednesday. In exchange, he agreed that Pelicot would reveal to him all the secrets about how he managed to make his wife unaware of the rapes and he convinced Maréchal to apply them.
Maréchal, who spent the last years of his life as a driver in an agricultural cooperative, was the second-to-last of ten siblings. Retired when the facts were discovered, he grew up in a very poor family that owned a farm in the south of France. His mother, his lawyer explained, was an alcoholic and his father extremely violent. “The children were beaten many nights by being tied to a tree on the property. They took refuge in the rabbit cages to escape from their father.”
The defense of Pélicot’s student is based on seeking some mitigating factor in the traumas that, according to his lawyer, would be at the base of acts that he had never committed before meeting Pélicot. “He was raped by his father, as were his brothers and sisters. One of them, in fact, could not bear it and committed suicide. It is true that he lived 45 years without showing a reaction to these problems, but there was a catalyst that caused everything to come to light: the meeting with Pélicot. That is how he fell into the perversion that he had seen at home, because he had never done anything like that,” says Gontard. “He entered into a context in which he not only wanted to do the same as Pélicot, but to do it with him. And that makes one think that Pélicot had a very important role in his actions. Experts say that Maréchal was very easily influenced and I believe that he manipulated him.”
The rapes with Pélicot continued until Cilia M., who has not reported her husband, woke up one day in the middle of the assault. One night in June 2020, she opened her eyes to find a burly stranger in her room, next to her husband. Pélicot had fled and her husband tried to justify it by explaining that the stranger wanted to see her underwear (Maréchal is bisexual). “I didn’t believe him, but from there I suspected it was because of rape…” she explained on the day she had to testify.
Dominique Pélicot testified again on Wednesday morning. She recalled the night when Jean-Pierre Maréchal’s wife woke up while they were abusing her. “I confess that when he turned on the light, I was shocked and left,” she said in a serious tone that contrasts with the one she used in the message. “He didn’t buy it.” [señalaba Maréchal a propósito de los ansióliticos que le había suministrado y que no le causaron el efecto esperado]. He asked what you were doing here.” And Pélicot replied: “He stared at me, I hope you don’t say my name.” […] Maréchal continued: “He didn’t believe me.” And his instructor finished with a laugh: “It’s true that you found a stranger in your room, hahaha.”
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