In Mazan rape trial, videos broadcast for the first time in public presence

For the first time, on Friday, October 4, in the presence of the public, videos and photographs were broadcast in the Mazan rape trial in Avignon, without changing the accused, who almost all stated that they planned to participate in a “scenery” libertine.

Returning to the initial decision of its president, Roger Arata, the Vaucluse criminal court effectively decided at midday, after a long debate of almost two hours between the parties, that the images broadcast during this emblematic trial on violence against women and chemicals The presentation would now be made in the presence of the press and the public. And from the afternoon hearing, nine videos and a handful of photographs were shown. All concerned the seven defendants, of the 51 defendants, whose cases were being examined this week.

The dissemination of these images, carefully archived by Dominique Pelicot, who admitted to having drugged his wife Gisèle from 2011 to 2020, without her knowledge, to rape her and have her raped by dozens of men he had recruited on the Internet, aims to confront the accused with his statements. Most of them claim to have believed they participated in the fantasy of a swinger couple or to have not realized Gisèle Pelicot’s unconscious state.

“A meaning to their suffering”

For almost an hour and a half, these images appeared on the screens of a breathless room and on those of an adjoining room where around sixty people were able to take a seat. Gisèle Pelicot, in the dock of the civil parties, remained most of the time leaning on her mobile phone, while in front of her, in the defendant’s box, on the other side of the courtroom, her ex-husband covered his eyes with a hand or looked away.

The other defendants adopted varied attitudes: some watched without flinching as they moved around Gisèle Pelicot, lying on the bed in the bedroom of the Mazan marital home, others preferred to look at the floor. However, briefly questioned, everyone maintained their line of defense.

On September 20, after the first videos and photographs were released, the judge decided to exclude the press and the public from subsequent screenings, due to their nature. “indecent and shocking”.

“Victory”

But Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers decided to challenge this measure and received the support of the prosecutor on Friday morning. After the court’s change of mind, they immediately talked about “victory”. “For Gisèle Pelicot, it is already too late, the damage has already been done. The two hundred rapes she suffered at the hands of these dozens of men who came to rape her in her bedroom while she was unconscious, the brutality of the debates held in this room, she will have to live with them for the rest of her life.Mr. Babonneau argued at the hearing.

For his other lawyer, M^my Antoine Camus, these videos “collapse the thesis of an accidental rape”. “They show that they are rapes of opportunity and that, beyond that, it was about degrading, humiliating, dirtying, in reality it was a matter of hatred of women. “No one reported the facts, each one contributed with their grain of sand to this banality of rape, to this banality of evil.”M added.^my Camus.

However, several lawyers for the fifty co-defendants in this extraordinary trial fiercely opposed the presence of the public and the press during the dissemination of the videos. “Justice does not need that to be approved, what sense do these nauseating projections have? They invited us to a screening test for a first case. Wasn’t one movie enough? »This is how M alleged^my Olivier Lantelme, therefore without success. He was referring to the broadcast, on Thursday, September 19, of chilling images in which we see an accused abusing a completely inert Gisèle Pelicot.

The hearing will resume on Monday with the questioning of a new group of five defendants. The verdict is expected in mid-December.