This Tuesday, Gisèle Pelicot faced the [[LINK:INTERNO|||Article|||673b52ba0179f900076e9ce7|||51 acusados de haberla violado durante años]]including her ex-husband, who drugged her so he could abuse her in an unconscious state. He also expressed that the scar they caused “will never heal.” “It’s the test of cowardice” launched during his last appearance into a long trial which is entering its final stretch.
In his final statement in these proceedings before the Avignon criminal court, Pélicot asked those sitting in the dock as a rebuke when they had asked her for permission when they had raped her. “I feel angry towards these men because at no time did they stop, at no time did they denounce. They came to satisfy their sexual urges. They could stop at any time and none of them were reported. “It attracts attention,” he denounced, turning towards them and pointing at them.
“The scar will never heal,” declared Pélicot, who believes that during the almost ten years that the abuse organized by her husband Dominique continued, suffered approximately 200 rapes. “I lost ten years of my life that I will never get back,” said the victim, who recalls that she is now 72 years old.
The victim reported that since the start of the legal proceedings, she has heard “unacceptable things”, and that when he became aware of the situation, he decided against the trial being held behind closed doors, as was his right, even though “I knew what I was exposing myself to”. Gisèle Pelicot indicated on several occasions that she had decided that the hearings would be public so that “shame will change sides” and insisted that he hopes that “sexist society opens its eyes and changes its outlook on rape.”
Regarding her husband’s behavior, it seemed that he was experiencing great sexual frustration, but since he knew that she would not agree to participate in swingers’ clubs, he chose to drug her.do with her what I wanted“.
The violations he suffered
The facts judged took place in the house where the Pélicots had settled during their retirement, in the town of Mazan, near Avignon. Her husband made contact with other men on an online platform dedicated to sexual encounters and invited them to his home after giving his wife large doses of anxiolytics which left her in a state of unconsciousness, what she allowed them to mistreat her without her having any memory.
Dominique Pélicot recorded and took photographs of these violations, documents that became the main evidence against him. The president of the court decided to take a brief break this morning after what was one of the hardest interventions of the hearing from an emotional point of view for Gisèle Pelicot, in particular because of the questions which were put to her posed by defense lawyers.
Notably those of Nadia El Bouroumi, who is the lawyer for two of the defendants and who criticized the victim for being relatively lenient with her ex-husband and not with the others who sit in the dock. The trial is entering its final stretch. After the last statement today from Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot, the arguments of private prosecution lawyers and next week, it will be the prosecution which will request the sentences of the accused before the intervention of their lawyers.
Béatrice Zavarro, Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, anticipated that during her client’s last intervention, she could address “the reasons which pushed him to act”, already mentioned.some little clues“in the two and a half months which have passed since the start of the trial. “You cannot leave this hearing with the frustration of not knowing the reasons why Dominique Pelicot acted in this way”, underlined Zavarro, who had expressed Monday his “I hope so” will explain why he also had in his files photos of his stepdaughters and his daughter Caroline, who suspects that her father could have drugged her to abuse her, as he did with her. his mother.
