Gisèle Pelicot faced this Tuesday with the 51 accused of having raped her for years, including her ex-husband, who drugged her so he could abuse her in an unconscious state. The scar they have caused “will never close,” the woman said in her last statement in this process before the Avignon Criminal Court.
“I feel angry towards these men because at no time did they stop, at no time did they report. They came to satisfy their sexual urges. They could stop at any time and not a single one reported. “That draws attention,” he denounced, turning towards them and pointing his finger at them. At what point did they ask my permission when they raped me? he snapped.
“The scar will never close,” added Pelicot, who estimated that during the almost ten years that the abuse organized by her husband, Dominique, continued, she suffered about 200 rapes. “I have lost ten years of my life that I will never get back,” stressed the victim, who recalled that she is now 72.
Pelicot has also used her last intervention in the process to reflect on the costs of the judicial procedure, which she herself decided to hold openly as was her right despite the fact that “I knew what I was exposing myself to.” Thus, she regretted having heard “unacceptable things” from the beginning, which shows the re-victimization that the complainants continue to face.
Gisèle Pelicot has repeatedly indicated that she decided that the hearings were public so that “shame could change sides” and this Tuesday she insisted that she hopes that “sexist society opens its eyes and changes its outlook on rape.” Regarding her husband’s behavior, she considered that he had “great sexual frustration”, but since he knew that she was not going to agree to participate in swinging clubs, he chose to drug her “to do what he wanted with me,” she added.
The events being judged occurred in the house to which the Pelicots had moved when they retired in the town of Mazan, near Avignon. Her husband came into contact with other men on an online platform dedicated to sexual encounters and invited them to his home once he had administered large doses of anxiolytics to his wife that left her in a state of unconsciousness, allowing them to abuse her. of her without keeping any memory. Dominique Pelicot recorded and took photographs of these rapes, documents that have become the main elements of evidence for the prosecution.
The president of the court decided to take a brief break this morning after what was one of the hardest interventions in the hearing from an emotional point of view for Gisèle Pelicot, in particular due to the questions posed to her by defense lawyers. Especially those of Nadia El Bouroumi, who is the lawyer for two of the defendants, and who reproached the victim for her alleged leniency with her ex-husband and not with other defendants.
The trial thus faces its final stretch. After the last statement today by Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot, the arguments of the lawyers for the private prosecution are scheduled to begin this Wednesday and next week it will be the Prosecutor’s Office that will request the sentences for the accused before the intervention of their lawyers.
#Gisèle #Pelicot #speaks #time #trial #point #permission #raped
