While most of the 51 defendants covered their faces with their arms, with a mask or pathetically hunched their necks into their sweaters or T-shirts, Gisèle Pélicot, a woman in her sixties who was raped one or more times by each of these men, looked at them attentively with her face uncovered. The woman, victim of one of the most atrocious cases of sexual assault in the history of France, also decided that the trial that began on Monday in Avignon against the man to whom she was married for 50 years and who over the course of a decade drugged her so that other men could rape her while she was unconscious, would be held in public. The decision was clear: the more publicity, the more dishonor for the rapists and their ex-partners, the better.
Gisèle appeared with her three children, also offspring of the man sitting in the dock. All three agreed that the trial should be as transparent and public as possible. But the second hearing (held on Tuesday), in which the cases of rape of her mother during those ten years began to be recounted one by one, was extremely harsh and nauseating. Caroline, the daughter of the victim, began to tremble 20 minutes into the hearing before the criminal court of Vaucluse. She burst into tears when the president Roger Arata began reading the summary of the facts and also mentioned a series of photomontages found on her father’s computer in which she herself appeared naked in a folder entitled “Around my daughter, naked.” Caroline finally left the courtroom, escorted by her two brothers and her lawyer, Antoine Camus, to return about 20 minutes later.
Gisèle Pélicot, however, remained seated calmly, wearing sunglasses and with hardly any change in expression, observing the face so familiar with horror, as if she were constructing memories that until then belonged only to her body. Opposite her, at the other end of the room in the area reserved for the 18 defendants in custody, her husband, wearing a grey T-shirt, also showed no signs of being nervous. The man did not ask or want to hide his face at any time, not even with a mask, like other defendants. He appeared confident and somewhat defiant. From time to time, he cast a few glances towards the room where the other 32 defendants who appeared at liberty were sitting. “Due to the number of defendants, the large amount of information seized and to have an overview for everyone, the reading will be concise and will focus on the key points of the case,” Roger Arata had specified at the beginning of his speech.
The president of this criminal court then began reading the summary of a 31-volume file, for which 51 men, out of 72 identified by investigators from the photos and videos found and which led to an investigation that lasted two years, were arrested. The exposition of the facts began on September 12, 2020, when Dominique Pélicot, 71, was arrested by a security guard in a supermarket in Carpentras (Vaucluse) after being caught filming female customers up their skirts. During his arrest, he explained that he had “acted on impulse” that he “could not control”. But during the searches, investigators found thousands of photos and videos showing his wife being raped by strangers in their home. In fact, the woman discovered at the police station that since 2011 her husband, whom she described as “a great guy” before being aware of the facts, had handed her over to dozens of men while she was sleeping under the effects of drugs such as benzodiazepines, a sleep that left her with no memories and that plunged her into a sort of coma. Her children, in fact, insisted that she visit a psychiatrist, thinking that she might be suffering from the beginnings of Alzheimer’s that was causing her memory lapses.
Dominique P., a supposedly model family man and lover of cycling, advertised the possibility of raping his wife in a chat forum titled “Without her knowledge”. According to the newspaper The Worldonly two of those 72 people – some of whom raped her up to six times – refused to take part after her husband’s offer. One of them, a fan of swingers’ clubs and so-called debauchery, spoke for days with the accused who tried to convince him to take part in the abuse. Finally, he explained, he refused because he considered it to be rape. Despite this, he did not alert the police.
“You’re like me, you like rape mode,” he told one of his interlocutors in a conversation found by investigators. To others, interested in his method, he explained that, by giving his wife sleeping pills (450 pills ordered over a year, according to the health insurance), he could abuse her and obtain practices that she rejected under normal circumstances, according to the chats that the police found on the man’s electronic devices. The profiles of the rapists were varied, but completely normal. A firefighter, a journalist, a merchant, a simple pensioner, a delivery man or a prison officer. Some were great fathers, attentive husbands and even loving grandparents. The rules, that was the only rule, were clear when they went to that house: park at a nearby school, enter stealthily, avoid the smell of perfume or tobacco, undress in the kitchen to avoid forgetting clothes in the bedroom and warm your hands on the radiator so as not to wake her.
In addition to the main defendant, the 50 attackers face sentences of up to 20 years in prison for aggravated rape. The defense, in general, is arguing that the defendants did not know that the woman was unconscious. The majority – 35 have admitted to the sexual acts – told the police that the victim pretended to be asleep and that this, in reality, was the point of the supposed game: a “delirium of a libertine couple,” they described it. Like this 54-year-old construction worker, who spoke of “a fantasy,” without feeling either the intention or the impression of committing rape, but obeying, “disconnected,” the instructions of Dominique P., whom they describe as an “orchestra conductor.” “His game consisted of his wife pretending to be asleep,” according to one of them. Now they will have to repeat this argument while the victim watches them.
#decision #Frenchwoman #Gisèle #stand #men #raped #behest #husband
