The prosecution is asking for 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence in France for the crime of rape, against Dominique Pélicot, for having abused his wife for 10 years, whom he drugged with sleeping pills and whom he propositioned to dozens of men for They will also mistreat her.
The prosecutor of the Avignon Court of Appeal, Laure Chabaud, requested this maximum sentence “with the greatest conviction”, and justified it by the psychology of Dominique Pelicot, whom she described as a perverse man, egocentric, disturbed, with multiple sexual deviations who wanted to satisfy their desires without setting “any limits” and without the consent of the victim.
In the trial of the 51 men accused of having raped Gisèle Pelicot over a decade, the prosecution of the Avignon trial insisted this Monday in its argument on the fact that the woman did not at any time give her consent and that she was reduced to “an object” by the attackers. “Gisèle Pelicot was reduced to an object. “Consent was not present either before or during the act,” declared prosecutor Jean-François Mayet at the start of his complaint before the Avignon criminal court.
Mayet denounced the “humiliating degradation” that Gisèle Pelicot suffered for nearly 10 years, during which her husband at the time, a 71-year-old confessed rapist, drugged her with sleeping pills to leave her completely unconscious and inert in order to that he could sexually abuse her and offer her to dozens of men. The representative of the Public Ministry underlined the “extraordinary” nature of this process which began on September 2, in which facts of “unimaginable seriousness” are judged.
Hell from 2011 to 2020
Dominique Pelicot, who admits to the accusations, took thousands of photos and videos of the rapes, documents which became the key evidence to convict these men, most of whom deny the facts. In total, there are 20,000 visual documents, recalled the prosecutor, which show “the extreme violence of the crimes”.
The facts judged lasted between July 2011 and October 2020, first in the Paris region, then in the house where the Pélicots had moved during their retirement in the town of Mazan, near Avignon.
Dominique Pelicot made contact with other men on an online platform and invited them to his home, after administering high doses of anxiolytics to his victim, which left her unconscious, allowing them to abuse her without that she has no memory of it.
It all ended in September 2020 when he was arrested for filming under the skirts of certain women in a supermarket in Carpentras and when searching his computer files, investigators discovered thousands of videos and photos in which appeared the rapes that the victim suffered.
Dominique Pélicot explained in his last statement last Tuesday that if he had drugged his then wife to rape her and offer her to numerous men for ten years, it was because he wanted to “control her without making her suffer “.
“Overpowering a rebellious woman was my fantasy,” said the man also accused of the rape and murder of a woman in 1991 and another attempted knife rape in 1999.
During the trial, Gisèle Pelicot said she felt “completely destroyed” after discovering she had been the victim of systematic rape for almost a decade. “I don’t know how I’m going to get back up. “I don’t know if my life will be long enough to understand everything that happened to me,” he admitted on October 23. The 71-year-old woman is already a true symbol of global feminism, having decided that this trial would be public “so that the shame changes sides” and that never again the victims are singled out for having been raped, but rather the attackers. .
This Saturday, new demonstrations took place across France, bringing together thousands of people in support of Gisèle Pelicot and all victims of gender-based violence. In total, 35,000 people gathered in the country’s main cities, according to the police, although the organizing entities increased this figure to 100,000 participants.
“Thanks to all of you, I have the strength to fight this fight to the end. I dedicate this fight to all people, women and men, victims of sexual violence in the world. To all these victims, I want to say today, look around you, you are not alone,” declared Gisèle Pelicot at the start of this trial, after an initial mobilization of her support.
The French Government plans to announce this Monday, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, new measures to combat gender-based violence suffered by women.
