Pending a possible suspension of proceedings in the afternoon, the Mazan rape trial began to address the 51 defendants individually on Wednesday, September 11. A hearing that is taking place even in the absence of the main one, the husband, Dominique Pelicot, who is ill and excused from the hearing for the third consecutive day.
The septuagenarian, accused of having drugged his now ex-wife, then raped her and had her raped by dozens of strangers recruited on the Internet, arrived at his box on Wednesday morning with the help of his cane, because he suffers from hip pain, wearing a long-sleeved grey jacket. He appeared visibly weakened, with very haggard facial features and his head in his hands. Ultimately, the defendant will not attend the debates concerning the first defendant.
“Depending on your health and your ability to appear”Pelicot could be questioned for the first time on Thursday afternoon, said Roger Arata, president of the Vaucluse criminal court.
This morning, the Vaucluse criminal court examined the case of Jean-Pierre M., a possible “disciple” of Dominique Pelicot and the only one of the 51 defendants to be prosecuted, not for rape of the main defendant’s wife, but by his own wife.
The 63-year-old man, a former truck driver for an agricultural cooperative, is accused of having reproduced the same protocol as Mr. Pelicot by drugging his partner with an anxiolytic in order to rape her, in the company of Mr. Pelicot several times. The events allegedly occurred twelve times between 2015 and 2020. “I acknowledge the facts”Jean-Pierre M., one of the eighteen defendants arrested, had seriously reported; thirty-two others appear free and the 51my is a fugitive – on September 2, at the opening of the trial.
“They deserve life imprisonment”
The hearing began with the president reading the report of the personality investigator, then the testimonies of his children. His partner, who did not file a civil suit “to protect their children”I could talk about the facts on Wednesday afternoon. “He has five children and wanted to protect them”explained one of the two directors of the investigation, Stéphan Gal, on Tuesday, acknowledging that this may seem “amazing when we see the images he saw”.
Jean-Pierre M. “He says he deserves life imprisonment, like Dominique Pelicot”Mr. Gal had also stated. Facing the investigators and the examining magistrate, Jean-Pierre M. explained that he had known Dominique Pelicot. “without their knowledge” in the Coco website lounge, closed last June. And “Of the twelve facts, Pelicot came at the request of Jean-Pierre M.”Mr. Gal had specified.
“Every time he moved, [ce dernier] He provided him with medication for next time”reported by M. Gal, corrected by M.my Béatrice Zavarro, lawyer of the main defendant, according to whom there was only “four discounts on medicines”.
On Wednesday, the presiding judge, Roger Arata, read out for the first time the complicated family history of Jean-Pierre M., marked by a childhood in great poverty and a context of domestic violence, including sexual violence.
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“I was raised by pigs”The defendant, the second-to-last of a family of ten children living on a farm, explained during his interrogation following his arrest in the winter of 2021. He is expected to speak in court on Thursday.
“The facts are very serious, I think he is aware of that. This trial will be a relief, I encourage him to turn himself in.”commented his 32-year-old son, who is named after his father’s first wife, estimating “very difficult to understand” that his mother-in-law, the second wife of his father, the victim, did not file a complaint and did not become a civil party. According to his son, “it is a certainty”Jean-Pierre M. was manipulated by Dominique Pelicot: “I firmly believe that if I had not met this person, this would never have happened.”
A seriously disturbed hearing program
The medical examination of Dominique Pelicot ordered by the court, scheduled for Wednesday morning, could therefore decide on the continuation of this trial which began on 2 September in Avignon: if his state of health does not allow it, Roger Arata could suspend the hearings for a few days, interrupting a very busy schedule which had already been seriously disrupted for a week.
“I am ordering an appraisal, I will sign the order in the morning and (…) I apologize to Mr. Pelicot for today.The judge announced at the opening of the eighth day of hearings of this extraordinary trial, after having obtained the agreement of the civil parties as well as the prosecutor.
“I met Mr. Pelicot this morning. He was sleeping in the prisons. He had vomited, he felt bad and his kidneys hurt. Physically he is there, but I am not sure he will be able to follow the debates in peace.”declared his lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, at the beginning of the hearing, even before the debates began.
“It is essential that Mr. Pelicot be able to appear”confirmed one of the lawyers for the civil parties, Mmy Stéphane Babonneau, in front of the family of the main victim, Gisèle Pelicot, 71, dressed in a beige sweater and zebra-print trousers.
Like his fifty co-defendants, most of whom are on trial for aggravated rape, Dominique Pelicot risks twenty years in prison. The events concerning his wife took place between July 2011 and October 2020, mainly at the couple’s home in Mazan, a town of 6,000 inhabitants in Vaucluse where they had moved in March 2013.
Mazan rape case: How did Dominique Pelicot hand his wife over to strangers? Summary in three minutes
The trial of Dominique Pelicot, which began on 2 September 2024, is already being hailed as historic and will run until 20 December 2024 before the Vaucluse criminal court. The 71-year-old pensioner used chemical subduing to hand over his unconscious wife, Gisèle Pelicot, to several dozen men recruited on the coco.fr website. Over a period of nearly ten years, the victim was raped more than ninety times without her knowledge.
Fifty-one men have been identified who appear alongside Dominique Pelicot. These rapists, who are now between 30 and 74 years old, come from different backgrounds and some of them work in public service professions.
In this video we review what we know about this issue and explain the carefully crafted strategy by Dominique Pelicot.
If you want to know more about the profile of attackers, we invite you to read the survey below.
“Understand in three minutes”
The explanatory videos that make up the series “Understanding in three minutes” are produced by the Vertical Videos department of World. Distributed mainly on platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook, their aim is to contextualise major events in a short format and make news accessible to everyone.
