The lawyer for Dominique Pelicot, the man on trial in France for having caused dozens of individuals to rape his wife in a state of chemical submission, alleged Wednesday that her client also had a side of “good father and good grandfather”.
For just over an hour, the lawyer Béatrice Zavarro tried to explain the reasons why her client became the “leader of the orchestra” of the abuse of his now former wife Gisèle, which was committed for a decade in the home of the couple
The “other Dominique”
Throughout his speech in front of the criminal court of Vaucluse, in the south of France, Zavarro, who began by expressing his “deep respect” for Gisèle Pelicot, highlighted the human side of the “other Dominique”, the “good father and grandfather” .
“Isn’t Dominique Pelicot Dominique Pelicot’s worst enemy?”he asked, while arguing that Pelicot has a split personality caused by the effect of childhood trauma. Zavarro told the Avignon court that there were “two Dominiques”, one a man apparently dedicated to his family and the other with a “certain perversity”.
Pelicot’s traumas
Lawyer Béatrice Zavarro recalled the traumas that Dominique Pelicot suffered during his childhood, before falling into “perversity”, a “gear” that led him to drug, rape and have his wife raped at his home in the south of France. “You are not born a pervert, you become one”he maintained, repeating a phrase used by his client during his first interrogation in court.
«This phrase is what the other Dominique makes, the one I advocate today. “He who divides,” said the lawyer. “This other Dominique is endowed with a certain perversity, but before that there is a man,” he added, before remembering “the harmful family climate” in which he grew up, with an “authoritarian, tyrannical” father.
Two sexual assaults in his youth
The lawyer also cited the two sexual assaults that Dominique Pelicot says he suffered in his youth: when a nurse raped him during a hospitalization when he was a child and when he was forced to participate in the rape of a young girl.
After requesting on Monday the maximum sentence of 20 years for Pelicot, 71, the main accused and considered the instigator of the events for a decade, this Wednesday the prosecutor announced the sentences that remained to be requested. The French prosecutor’s office requested sentences of between four and 20 years in prison against the 51 defendants in the trial.
The prosecutor’s sentencing requests are significantly harsher than the average sentence for rape in France, which was 11.1 years in 2022, according to the Ministry of Justice.
The victim, currently 71 years old, was at the sentencing hearings, as well as throughout the entire trial, seeking to raise awareness in society about rape through chemical submission.
This trial went around the world due to the number of rapes, but also because of the profile of the accused: they are between 26 and 74 years old, with occupations that cover a vast range of activities, such as firefighter or journalist.
#Dominique #Pelicots #lawyer #defense #good #man #double #personality #caused #trauma
