“I thank you for giving me the floor, because for eight weeks I have felt hurt.” With these words Gisèle Pelicot began her second appearance before the Criminal Court since the rape trial against her ex-husband and the men he invited to the family home began. Fifty defendants, aged between 36 and 74, who sit in the dock alongside Dominique Pelicot in the largest trial for rape by chemical submission in the history of France.
Gisèle Pelicot was called back to the stand on Wednesday so that she could express herself about what has been declared so far in the trial, which began on September 2 and has just passed its halfway point. The president of the court, Roger Arata, requested a new statement from the victim last week, a few days after the main defendant also did so. “I am a destroyed woman and I don’t know how I am going to get back up,” she said.
Before the statement, Gisèle Pelicot had arrived at the Avignon Court early in the morning, greeted as she has every day since the trial began by the applause of people who come to express their support. In her previous statement, last month, she had already denounced the treatment she had suffered since the beginning of the trial, in particular the insinuations of the defense lawyers of the men who sit in the dock next to her husband. “I feel humiliated, in this room they have called me an alcoholic, they have called me an accomplice,” she had protested then.
Since then, that line of argument from some members of the defense has not changed. Last Friday, they once again hinted at the victim’s possible complicity. Specifically, a lawyer asked him if it seemed “credible” to him to say that he had never noticed anything, despite the fact that several men had not used a condom, and that therefore, when he got up in the morning, due to the “vertical effect”, he should have felt his sperm falling.
At the same hearing, Isabelle Crepin-Dehaene, lawyer for two of the co-accused, had a video shown showing Dominique Pelicot raping his wife who, although deeply drugged, was not completely unconscious and was capable of articulating protests. The purpose of this interrogation was to contradict the statements of Dominique Pelicot, who a few minutes earlier had stated that his wife had never woken up while she was under the effects of Temesta, the anxiolytic he gave her.
“So that society changes”
In this context, Gisèle Pelicot took advantage of her statement on Friday to underline the “hardness” involved in witnessing the public dissemination of the videos recorded by her ex-husband, but confirmed her desire that the sessions not be held behind closed doors “so that society changes.” […] so that all rape victims can say to themselves: if Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can do it. I don’t want them to feel ashamed again. The shame is not for us, it is for them.”
She recounted being “a happy and fulfilled wife for fifty years” and explained how she had “tried to prepare for this trial.” “But I still haven’t understood why. I’m trying to understand how this husband, who was the perfect man, could come to this. How could my life have turned around like this? And addressing her now ex-husband: “I always tried to support you and you have ended up falling to the bottom of the human soul. And unfortunately it was you who chose it.”
“I am a destroyed woman,” she said in court Wednesday. “I don’t know how I’m going to rebuild myself, how I’m going to recover from all this. Fortunately, I have the support of a psychiatrist, but it will take many years. At almost 72 years old, I don’t know if my life will be long enough to fully recover.”
Focus on the main accused
A few days before, the president of the court had once again called the main defendant to the stand, to question him about what had been stated so far in the trial. From the beginning of the process Pelicot has recognized the facts and during the trial he has not allowed the men who sit in the dock with him to accuse him.
In that second interrogation Dominique Pelicot described in detail the modus operandi that he developed over the years, his control of the doses of anxiolytics and the time necessary to incapacitate his wife and the duration of the effects. How he drugged his wife by mixing the previously crushed tablets with the coffee, puree or ice cream that he brought to her bed. And how after each rape he needed time to collect, clean and dispose of the evidence.
In an unusual configuration, the main accused and his lawyer have become a support for prosecutors and the private prosecution during interrogations. “I prefer the truth to lies. “I know that 20 years are going to fall on me, that I have lost everything, what else can I do now?” he stated on Friday when asked by the president of the court.
_“Do you consider that you were coherent, exhaustive and precise in the instructions you gave to all the co-defendants, and that you systematically specified that Mrs. Pelicot would be sedated with a drug that you had administered to her?” Roger Arata asked him.
_“Yes, all the people I had contact with, from the beginning, knew everything I have already said: I had drugged her and there were a series of obligations that left no room for doubt.”
Establishing the degree of knowledge of the accused is one of the fundamental points of this phase of the trial. In this sense, last week one of the experts, psychiatrist François Amic, was also heard for the second time, who described the majority of the accused as “subjects manipulated” by Dominique Pelicot.
A testimony that Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers, as well as the lawyer representing Dominique Pelicot, tried to counteract. When François Amic was asked if he had seen the videos, he responded with a simple no. The legal representatives of the victim try to demonstrate that there was no influence or subordination that could serve as a mitigating factor or could lead the court to reduce a possible sentence for the accused.
In any case, the debates on the capacity to influence once again place Dominique Pelicot at the center of the trial. And they will be fundamental when the five judges of the Criminal Court have to pronounce the sentence on the 50 co-accused as well as the sentences for each of them. The verdict of the trial is expected around December 20.
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