With white roses in hand, hundreds of people, including many women victims of violence, marched in silence. “uncovered”in support of Gisèle Pelicot, in Mazan, on Saturday afternoon, October 5.
Mazan, city of Vaucluse, where for years Gisèle Pelicot, seventy years old, was drugged with anxiolytics and raped by her husband and by dozens of strangers she recruited on the Internet, facts tried before the Avignon criminal court since September 2.
The march was inaugurated by women who have been victims of violence and who are learning to rebuild themselves thanks to equine therapy, within the Isofaculté association, at the initiative of this event.
“This is the first time I have held a demonstration. I think it is normal to do it for a woman and because of my experience”testifies Catherine Borel, 69 years old. “This test is terrible, hard, but this woman has tremendous courage for having managed to rebuild herself. It will allow you to move forward. I was a victim of things thirty years ago and there was nothing we could do about it. “They didn’t believe me about the violence and I found my two children flying out the window.”he dares to say today.
With her, Josiane Dolce, an elegant 73-year-old lady, with red hair like Gisèle Pelicot, confesses that she has always “there in [s]in the head » the traces of the psychological violence of which he was a victim. Both came from Carpentras, a neighboring town. “If there are women in the same situation as you, dare to say it, let us support you”they add.
Upon reaching the Mazan stables, after an hour of walking along a small road, the protesters placed their flowers at the foot of a wooden heart on which was written “Love, empathy, living better together”.
Videos shown at the trial
For the first time, videos and photographs were broadcast in public on Friday during Mazan’s rape trial in Avignon, without, however, changing the accused, who almost all maintained that they believed they were participating in a “scenery” libertine.
Returning to the initial decision of its president, Roger Arata, the Vaucluse criminal court 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 subjugation chemical will now not be carried out in the presence of the press and the public.
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. , intends to confront the accused with their 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.
