The hearing of the rape trial in Mazan was again suspended on Monday 16 September until Tuesday due to the absence of the main defendant, Dominique Pelicot, who is ill and did not appear in court. The 71-year-old pensioner “negative[e] its removal, citing health problems that were observed [dimanche] as part of an extraction » from his cell, said the president of the court, Roger Arata. Mr. Pelicot is due to be examined by doctors today to determine whether he is fit to appear before the court.
“We will suspend for today and resume tomorrow morning”Arata added. He also asked for new medical knowledge. “during the day” carried out by “a college of experts” composed of a forensic pathologist and a physician “To make one point clear. So that we can be informed about Mr. Pelicot’s compatibility to appear before the court.”The main accused underwent a CT scan on Sunday and is suffering from “kidney stones, kidney infection and prostate problem”Mr. Arata specified.
Only when these results are known will a decision be made on whether or not to postpone this extraordinary trial, which began on September 2 and in which 51 people accused of raping Mr. Pelicot’s ex-wife are being tried.
“Abnormal” situation
“Words cannot express how abnormal the situation is that we find ourselves in this morning. There are people whose job it is to ensure that Mr. Pelicot is able to attend his trial.”said one of the lawyers for the civil parties, Stéphane Babonneau, at the hearing. “If this situation is due to a delay in treatment, it would be a scandal.”he added.
The attorney general said “I regret this situation” ymmy Pelicot’s lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, criticised her client’s lack of medical care. “They took us hostage for eight days. Because if it had been taken care of from the beginning we wouldn’t be here”he explained to the audience.
Pelicot, accused of having drugged his wife for ten years in order to rape her and having her raped by dozens of strangers recruited on the Internet at their marital home in Mazan, in Vaucluse, has been on trial since 2 September in Avignon.
A decade of rape
It all came to light after Mr Pelicot was caught filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping centre in Carpentras (Vaucluse). It was by searching his computer that investigators discovered this decade of rapes, photographed, filmed and meticulously subtitled and archived by the accused.
Alongside him, fifty men, aged between 26 and 74, are on trial in Avignon, most of them accused of aggravated rape, acts for which they face twenty years in prison.
Covered by the media around the world and made a symbol of the issue of rape by chemical subjugation, the Mazan rape trial is also used as an example by feminist movements to revive the debate on the issue of consent. Mr. Pelicot, accused of having drugged his wife for ten years in order to rape her and having her raped by dozens of strangers recruited on the Internet in their marital home in the south-east of France (Mazan, Vaucluse), has been on trial since 2 September in Avignon.
