#Mazan trial

[kelthoumrambles]

[heretherebewolves]

Shame changes sides.

[someone-will-remember-us]

There is no collective noun for rapists but spend a week at the Pelicot trial and you wonder why. As the early morning queue of women who’ve come to support Gisèle Pelicot passes through security at the Palais de Justice, Avignon, you spy men with downturned faces scurrying across the lobby past the press. In court they sit on the left, clustered around a glass box containing more men, those in custody for the gravest crimes. Since there are 50 in total, the alleged rapists have been tried in batches and I’m just here for the final seven: Boris, Philippe, Nicolas, Nizair, Joseph, Christian, Charly.

Plus Dominique Pelicot himself, who invited them all into his marital bedroom, where he had his wife waiting, drugged and naked, and who joined in and filmed it all. Pelicot, 71, crumpled and fat now, but with a residual bulky power, sits sullenly alone with his guard in a separate glass box, protected from the other men who blame and detest him. Often after lunch he appears to doze off.

Such nondescript men. Grizzled, middle-aged (the mean is 47 years old), smart-casual in windcheaters or leather jackets and their best trainers, like minicab drivers waiting for fares. Ordinary men in many respects, not vagrants, junkies or career criminals. This week’s seven includes a fireman, an electrician and a journalist; several are fathers, two were keen weightlifters, one bred dogs. French trials helpfully begin with a personality profile formed from interviews with the men, their friends and colleagues. Poverty, domestic violence and mental breakdowns feature, but also that a man is “kind” or “gentle”, had a lovely childhood, adored his grandparents or is devoted to his mum.

Yet each one had sex with an unconscious woman, that is beyond doubt, thanks to Pelicot’s camera mounted on a tripod beside the bed, and by his own admission. “I am a rapist,” he has declared, “like the others in this room.”

From the Pelicot affair have come demands for reform to French rape law, for sexual violence to be treated more seriously, for an investigation into “chemical submission” — the coercive use of sedatives. But one question overshadows all others. How many men would have done the same? If Pelicot could recruit at least 70 willing participants (a number could not be identified) within a 25-mile radius of Mazan, the Provençal town where the couple retired, how many in the whole of France? As I walk through Avignon with Juliette Campion of radio station France Info, who bears the strain of reporting this case since September, she gestures to a bureau de tabac: “You think, ‘Would a guy in there have raped Gisèle? Or men in the boulangerie or those on the street?’ Women are looking at men differently: they’re asking, ‘Could you or you or you?’ ”

On the right of the court, behind her counsel of three serious, dark-haired young men, is Gisèle Pelicot with her female companion from victim support, leaning on the wall, as far from the men as the room allows, but facing her ex-husband. Her composure is remarkable. Although clearly tired and strained, she retains a quiet vivacity reflected in her clothes. Instead of shrinking away in black, she dresses each day as if meeting friends for drinks on a sunny terrace. A chic scarf, a faux fur bag, patent leather boots. Clothes that say, “I still have a life.” Every evening, when women line up to clap her out of court, she speaks to them warmly, neither reticent nor relishing the attention. Every day she walks through the cobbled streets past graffiti saying, “Gisèle, les femmes te remercient” (Gisèle, women thank you) to lunch at the same excellent brasserie, and people turn to gaze at her in awe.

The extraordinary woman who refused to be silenced

The humiliations of Gisèle Pelicot have a mythic quality. This is a woman who discovered the man she married aged 20, with whom she had three children and seven grandchildren, waited until she was deeply asleep before removing her pyjamas, dressing her in “sexy” underwear or writing on her buttocks, “I am a good submissive bitch,” then he let a stranger penetrate her inert body, filmed it, washed her intimately and replaced her pyjamas. This is a woman who thought she was going insane, had Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour, whose children thought she was dying, who stopped driving and going out alone, who slept all day and once woke puzzled why her hair was shorter. “But madame,” said her hairdresser, “you came in yesterday.” This is a woman who had mysterious gynaecological problems, including a swollen cervix (and still lives with four STDs), who thought her husband wonderful for accompanying her to medical tests, including an MRI.

This is a woman who, when her husband was arrested for “upskirting” in a Leclerc supermarket and police found the contents of his phone, discovered her whole 50-year marriage was a travesty, that he’d raped her in a service station car park, on Valentine’s Day and on her 66th birthday, and may have raped their daughter too. This is a woman who has listened to legal arguments about whether a man put his tongue inside or merely kissed her vagina, who heard another man say he’d only returned to rape her a second time because he couldn’t find anyone better, who sits in a courtroom while three giant TV screens show clips of her body being coldly humped by yet another “ordinary” guy.

Yet this is a woman who gathered up every scrap of her humiliation and with it constructed a mirror that she holds up defiantly to the court and to French society itself. “Shame must change sides,” she said, and in insisting the entire trial be conducted openly, that the worst men can do to women is witnessed by the whole world, she has done exactly that.

I ask many women I meet in Avignon how men in their lives regard the accused. They say they call them losers and freaks, that these are men on the margins, with no relation to themselves. But, along with the testimony I hear, the people I talk to believe this case raises many questions about French sexual mores. Whatever the decision later this month by five judges — there is no jury — Gisèle Pelicot will never be forgotten.

The court turns to Christian L, a fireman with a straggly castaway beard, who speaks from the glass box because after he was arrested, police found 4,000 child sex abuse and zoophilic images on his hard drive. We hear from his girlfriend, Sylvie, a small blonde in a grey hoodie, who says he’s a wonderful man, and is suspected of destroying evidence. Christian L recalls the victims he watched die in fires, the coffins of 11 colleagues he carried, the mental breakdowns that ensued. He was married but after his two daughters were born says he went off sex with his wife and turned to libertinisme. Strange, I think, that the French have coined this noble, philosophical concept, with its whiff of the barricades, to describe what we call swinging or dogging.

Like all the men, Christian met Pelicot through coco.fr — the murky, unmoderated site since closed down and now the focus of many major police investigations — on a forum called À son insu (without her knowledge). Christian L had already enjoyed “Sleeping Beauty” encounters with ten other couples. He spells out the rules: that you only dealt with the husband, sending him photos for approval, and during the sexual encounter he ran the show. Sometimes the wife woke up, other times not. How did he know, asked Gisèle’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, that she consented?

“In a libertine encounter,” Christian L explained, “it is the husband’s responsibility to ensure consent.”

But how could you be sure?

“Are we expected to sign a contract?” Christian L spluttered.

“You could ask the woman,” Babonneau suggested.

How the case could change French law

Given the overwhelming video evidence, the defendants can only claim Pelicot deceived or drugged them, or they believed Gisèle was collaborating in a game. If this case were before a British court, rape would be decided by two tests: whether Gisèle had “capacity to consent” (tough to argue given Pelicot admits to drugging her) and whether the men had “reasonable belief” in her consent. Unlike most European countries, French rape law has no concept of consent. Rather, it is defined as penetration “by violence, constraint, threat or surprise”. (The prosecution case rests on a convoluted definition of surprise.)

But rather than demand consent be added to the law, French feminists are divided. Some agree with President Macron, who supports change; many others argue that consent would put the onus on the victim to prove her conduct was not an invitation. This seems an odd objection, especially as the whole purpose of the video evidence is to show no one could believe Gisèle capable of consent, given she was so lifeless one man asked Pelicot, “Is your wife dead?”

Alice Géraud is the author of Sambre, an investigation into how, due to the indifference and cruelty of police, a caretaker called Dino Scala in northern France managed to rape 54 women over a period of 30 years. “The Pelicot case with 50 defendants and one victim feels a strange inverse of Sambre.”

Géraud believes the Pelicot affair could provide the same impetus for change as a famous 1974 case of two Belgian tourists, Anne-Marie Tonglet and Aracelli Castellano, who, camping near Marseilles, were brutally raped by three local men. As was normal practice, the crime was downgraded from felony to misdemeanour on the basis the victims eventually stopped resisting. But the women, a lesbian couple, persisted and thanks to their feminist lawyer, Gisèle Halimi, it became the first rape case to be heard in the higher assizes court. Like Gisèle Pelicot, the women waived their anonymity. “We believe that it’s one thing for a man to rape,” said Halimi, “and another to know it’ll get around his village, his work, the papers.” Shame changed sides: the men were jailed and the French criminal code was rewritten defining rape as a serious offence.

For Géraud, the greatest current injustice is that whether a man has raped one women or 50, the maximum sentence is 20 years (here a serial rapist can be jailed for life). “This is law made by men,” she says, “with a grave lack of knowledge of rape culture.” She is scornful too about libertinisme as a universal excuse for male sexual exploitation. “Libertinisme was why Coco existed for so long,” she says. “It is the justification for prostitution, for the porn industry.”

Charly A is the youngest of all the defendants, just 22 when he first entered the Pelicot house. Small, bearded, now 30, we learn his childhood was chaotic, his father an alcoholic, his mother had many sexual partners; there are hints of abuse. “This is a family of secrets,” concludes the personality profiler. A psychiatrist adds he is immature, struggles to sustain relationships and instead consumes porn, “especially the Milf [Mother I’d like to f***] category with mature women”. In 2016, he made contact with Pelicot via Coco: “He said his wife would be lying there pretending to be asleep, he doesn’t tell me more.”

Over time Pelicot asks Charly if he knows anyone they could drug for sex and he proffers the only woman in his life — his own mother. Pelicot gives him pills (which Charly claims to have thrown away), shows him how to crush them, keeps pressing him to use them. “When can I come and we f*** your mother?” he asks in one video, but Charly keeps stalling, saying his brother is at home. Yet he returns to violate Gisèle, always with Pelicot, once with another man, a total of six times. “Did you feel like you were in a porn film?” asks Babonneau. Charly shakes his head.

Until this point, very late in the trial, the influence of internet pornography has barely been explored. The court only notes paedophiliac images, not “normal” usage. Yet Mathieu Lacambre, a psychiatrist who evaluates Charly A, remarks how porn sites not only push users to more extreme content but to enact porn fantasies in real life. “Until now Charly A was behind the screens,” he says. “Now [in Gisèle] he has an object served up on a platter a few miles from home. The sleeping princess Milf, voilà.”

A rented home in a quiet cul-de-sac

I drive out to Mazan, a lovely honey-stoned French village set in the vineyards below Mont Ventoux, where the Pelicots retired from Villiers-sur-Marne, a Paris commuter town where he was electrician and she was a manager at EDF. I imagine Gisèle browsing the little boutique, dropping into the beauty salon, sipping an aperitif outside the bistro. The home they rented for ten years is five minutes away in a quiet cul-de-sac of four houses behind tall cypress trees. It is lemon yellow with blue shutters, a pool, a very prominent alarm system, and new tenants. Given how many men knew her address, Gisèle fled four years ago for her own safety, with just a suitcase and her dog.

Today an immense cloud of migrating starlings swoops over the house like pixels in a photograph. This was where their grandchildren loved to visit in the summer, but also the centre of Dominique Pelicot’s porn operation. For what else was this grotesque man but a pornographic auteur?

We leave our car, just as Pelicot instructed the men, in the sports ground car park, by the bottle bank. I think of them texting their arrival, then creeping down the lane. (One man made his girlfriend wait in the car.) Pelicot would meet them at the door by the light of his phone, tell them to undress in the dark living room and warm their hands on a radiator. (They’d been instructed to be clean, not smell of cigarettes or wear cologne.) Then they were led into a bedroom with a TV, a chest of drawers, a bed with a naked Gisèle motionless on white sheets, and a mounted camera.

Whatever followed next was carefully orchestrated by Pelicot, a director urging on actors in stage whispers, since the objective was to do what they desired without waking Gisèle. Pelicot would tell them how and when to penetrate her, or hold his wife’s gaping mouth to facilitate oral sex. Given four Temesta (lorazepam), a powerful anti-anxiety drug he’d crushed into her wine or ice cream, his wife was like a patient on an operating table. Even so, if her arm gave an involuntary spasm,the men would scuttle from the room. A friend who has sat through many court videos says it was Pelicot ordering the humping men to go doucement — softly — that upset her, since she knew this was not out of tenderness for Gisèle.

All the while the camera rolled. Why did these men agree to have their crimes recorded? They say it was part of the deal, that Pelicot told them Gisèle was shy and liked to watch the sex later. But perhaps also because, in taking part, these men were promoted from porn consumers to creators. Filming was central to their fantasy. When Christian L finally climaxes he turns to give the camera a cheery thumbs-up.

For Pelicot, each film added to his oeuvre. Police discovered a carefully curated archive of 20,000 images and videos on hard drives and memory sticks showing 200 rapes. He gave each film a title like “Squirt on the ass”, “Cock in mouth” or “Jacques fingering”. This man, once caught by his daughter-in-law masturbating at his computer, was now a porn impresario.

The question at the centre of the case

Why did Pelicot do all this to a wife he professed to love, whom he called “a saint”? Was it to punish Gisèle for an affair early in their marriage (although he was serially unfaithful himself)? Or because when he’d asked her to join him in the libertinisme scene she’d refused — so he devised a way to make her. But Gisèle was not his first victim: Pelicot has admitted to the rape of an estate agent, using ether to drug her, in 1999, and will be tried for the rape/murder of another young estate agent, Sophie Narme, in 1991. The French police cold case bureau is investigating his possible links to many other unsolved crimes.

But as the “Without her knowledge” forum suggests, his was not a unique fantasy. The Pelicot case has illuminated the issue of “chemical submission”, not only drinks being spiked by strangers in bars, but drugs used to control partners within relationships. The French health service is noted for being blasé about prescribing heavy-duty medications, which is how Pelicot stockpiled his vast stash of Temesta.

Documentary-maker Linda Bendali has made a film for French TV about chemical submission, featuring seven cases, including a 13-year-old girl drugged by her father with medicine supposedly for her allergies, put in lingerie and raped over two years, and a 60-year-old woman drugged then raped at home by a man she was mentoring at work. “I’ve looked back at 30 years of press reports of rape,” says Bendali, “which includes dozens of women saying they woke up — mainly with men they know— unable to remember what happened.”

The Sleeping Beauty scenario, she says, is not merely a means for a man to get easy sexual access, but a way to enjoy absolute domination. “You are not even giving her the chance to consent,” says Bendali. “You can do anything you want to a drugged woman, for as long as you want. You can dress her how you want. These men want total power.” Pelicot is typical in filming his crimes: “Pictures are trophies. He was driven by a mix of desires for blackmail and voyeurism.”

Gisèle’s daughter, Caroline Darian, who was also drugged and photographed naked by her father, is heading a campaign on chemical submission, demanding police take samples of hair from rape victims, the only way sedation can be proved.

In court, I hear another psychiatrist tasked with assessing whether each of the final seven defendants has the profile of a sexual abuser. One by one, he exonerates the men, saying they are not dangerous or likely to reoffend, to the growing exasperation of Gisèle’s team. Then he reaches Charly A. “He doesn’t search [for victims] systematically,” says the psychiatrist. “He’s not a predator.” Finally, Babonneau explodes: “Six times with a sleeping woman and he’s not a sexual abuser?” The men do not identify as rapists because, like this psychiatrist, they define rape as frenzied sexual violence, not an opportunistic act performed to whispers in a private home. As one defendant put it, “It’s her husband, his house, his room, his bed, his wife.”

Women unite in the town of Mazan

Both in religious and political terms, Mazan is a conservative town: for 500 years it was part of a papal enclave and in the recent French election voted heavily for Marine Le Pen. Villagers regarded the Pelicot case with horror and sympathy which turned quickly to resentment when press named it l’affaire Mazan. Amid longstanding families who’ve known each other for generations, the Pelicots were outsiders who’d brought disgrace into a rural community. Tired of inquiries, the mayor, Louis Bonnet, 74, told the BBC, “It could have been far more serious. There were no kids involved. No women were killed.”

At the Lucky Horse Ranch outside Mazan, women victims of sexual violence receive equine therapy. I’m sceptical at first about how grooming and riding horses could help rape victims, but somehow these large, placid animals are calming and restorative. Here I meet Latika, 33, who at first was too timid to touch a Shetland pony, but now sits high on a saddle for our photograph.

Latika was separating from her husband, the father of her two children, but still sharing a house. He was violent, hitting her daughters, putting her in hospital with cuts and a broken rib. Two years after they’d last had sex, she woke to find him inside her. She believes the sweet tea he often gave her was laced with sedatives, but that night she hadn’t drunk it all. She realised he’d been drugging her for years — her mother recalls finding her deeply unconscious early in her relationship — and, worse, she was pregnant with a third child. She told the police, who addressed the domestic violence but ignored the rape. Her husband fled to Guadeloupe and she was left traumatised, fearful of leaving the house.

“I didn’t feel people really believed what had happened to me until Gisèle Pelicot spoke out,” says Latika, who has since made the police reopen her case. In October, as women across France holding white flowers protested in support of Gisèle, Latika headed the local march into Mazan and the next day Gisèle herself visited the ranch. “She said it is almost unbearable to return to this place where terrible things happened,” says Latika, “but she wanted to thank us. She told me, ‘I didn’t know the meaning of my life before this happened — but I do now.’ ”

Watching Gisèle take such sustenance from her supporters, you wonder how she will cope when the trial finally ends. She is writing a book and could, if she chose, become a global campaigner. “There is something particularly powerful,” says Linda Bendali, “about her being an older woman — she represents all our mothers. All generations identify with her.” But those close to Gisèle say that, at 72, she may just return to a quiet life of friends, grandchildren and her garden, in the secret location where she now lives.

But she is already an icon of courage for the women who come from across France and beyond just to watch the trial on a screen in an overspill room. Some want to witness history, a few enjoy the sensational evidence like��tricoteuses at the guillotine, but many have risen at 5am, taking a day off work, to support a woman they deeply admire. Marion Spiteri and Amélie Planche, both 24 and law graduates, feel the case opened their eyes. “How can it be,” Spiteri says, “that so many men did this without her consent?” “It is terrifying,” Planche adds, “that a woman cannot even trust her own husband.” They tell me, astonishingly, that neither they nor their friends ever go to the toilet in a bar or club alone.

But then the nation of libertinisme lags behind in its attitude to violence against women. Until 2021, France did not even have an age of consent, effectively decriminalising even incestuous relations between children and adults, allowing several high-profile child abusers, including firemen who groomed a 13-year-old girl, to evade rape charges. Each time a prominent Frenchman is accused of rape — whether politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn or, currently, actor Gerard Dépardieu — famous French actresses leap to defend him. This is the nation that convicted child rapist Roman Polanski fled to from America, and is still fêted. The #MeToo movement was regarded by many as a wave of Anglosphere prudishness, contrary to the spirit of French seduction. So what can the Pelicot trial achieve?

I meet feminists from Les Amazones d’Avignon, the creators of graffiti across the city supporting Gisèle. (So as not to spoil the city walls, they write slogans on paper that can be removed.) Their latest reads “20 ans pour chacun” — 20 years for each one. I suggest a drink in a café nearby: “Not in there,” says one Amazone, “that’s where all the rapists go.” Blandine Deverlanges, 56, is part of the Coalition Féministe Loi Intégrale putting 130 proposals about sexual violence before the French parliament, including a ban on lawyers harassing victims in court. They are disgusted the defence asked Gisèle why she swam naked in her own swimming pool.

“This is a trial,” says Deverlanges, “of one extraordinary man, the monster Pelicot, and many ordinary men.” And as we talk I see a group of them emerge nervously from their favoured café and head back to the court. A collective noun for rapists? A violation, a banality, a shame.

(archive)

[a-room-of-my-own]

Woman tells trial of husband who invited men to rape her: ‘I was sacrificed on altar of vice’

Gisèle Pélicot says French police saved her life when they investigated husband, who drugged her and enlisted men to rape her

A French woman whose husband has admitted drugging her and inviting more than 80 men to rape her over the course of a decade has said she “was sacrificed on the altar of vice” and treated “like a rag doll”.

Gisèle Pélicot, 72, said “police saved my life” when they investigated her husband, Dominique Pélicot’s, computer in November 2020, after a security guard caught him filming up the skirts of women in a supermarket near their home in a village in southern France.

Police said they found a file labelled “abuses” on a USB drive connected to his computer that contained 20,000 images and films of his wife being raped almost 100 times.

Recounting the moment in November 2020 when police first showed her images of a decade of sexual abuse orchestrated by her husband, Pélicot, who had been drugged to the point of unconsciousness, told the court: “My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart. Everything I had built up over 50 years.”

She said she had barely recognised herself in the images, saying she was motionless. “I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” she said. “They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.

“When you see that woman drugged, mistreated, a dead person on a bed – of course the body is not cold, it’s warm, but it’s as if I’m dead.” She told the court rape was not a strong enough word, it was torture.

She told a panel of five judges that she had only found the courage to watch the footage in May this year. “Frankly, these are scenes of horror for me,” she said.

Referred to by her first name in court, Gisèle Pélicot has waived her right to anonymity in order for the trial to be held in public, with the support of her three adult children. She said she was testifying “for all women” who had been assaulted while drugged and to ensure “no woman suffers this”.

Her husband this week answered “yes” in court when asked if he was guilty of the drugging and attacks. His lawyer said that after his arrest he “always declared himself guilty”, saying: “I put her to sleep, I offered her, and I filmed.”

Police have said that between 2011 and 2020, Dominique Pélicot crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication and mixed them into his wife’s evening meal or in her wine at their home in Mazan, near Carpentras in Provence. He then enlisted men to rape and sexually abuse her, contacting them via an online chatroom, where members discussed preferences for non-consenting partners.

The accused men recruited by her husband were instructed to avoid smelling of any kind of fragrance or cigarette smoke to avoid alerting his wife and to leave if she moved so much as an arm, investigators said. Fifty men are on trial for allegedly taking part in the rape and abuse.

Speaking in a calm and clear voice, Gisèle Pélicot told the court how she and her husband had married when they were 21, had three children and seven grandchildren, and had been very close. “We weren’t rich but we were happy. Even our friends said we were the ideal couple,” she said.

She told the court that without knowing she was being regularly drugged at night, she had begun to have difficulties remembering things and concentrating and even feared taking the train to see her adult children in case she missed her stop. She said she had lost weight and at one point had difficulty controlling her arm.

Worried she was suffering from the start of Alzheimer’s disease, she discussed the subject with her husband. She said he had supported her and booked an appointment with a specialist, who said it was not Alzheimer’s.

Asked by the judge if she had experienced gynaecological issues, Gisèle Pélicot said yes. She said medical tests during the police investigation showed she had been infected with several sexually transmitted diseases.

Demonstrators hold placards during a during the trial of a man accused of drugging his wife for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home.

She said in the hours after being told by police what had happened to her she felt like dying. She described how she had to explain the trauma to her adult children, saying her daughter’s scream “was etched into my memory”.

She left the house with two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together”. Since then, “I no longer have an identity … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself,” she said.

Gisèle Pélicot, who has been supported in court by her children, has been praised by lawyers for her strength and calm at the trial. She said she appeared solid but was “in ruins” and did not know how her body had withstood the abuse and now the trial.

The 50 men on trial with her husband include a local councillor, nurses, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, soldier, firefighter and civil servant, many of whom lived around Mazan, a town of about 6,000 inhabitants. The men were aged between 26 and 73 at the time of their arrests.

Several of the accused have denied the charges, telling police they did not know Gisèle Pélicot was not a willing partner, accusing her husband of tricking them. Detectives were unable to identify and trace more than 30 other men who were recorded.

Gisele Pélicot said she had recognised only one of her alleged rapists, a man who had come to discuss cycling with her husband at their home. “I saw him now and then in the bakery; I would say hello. I never thought he’d come and rape me,” she said.

Gisèle Pélicot’s lawyer, Antoine Camus, said she did not want a trial behind closed doors because “that’s what her attackers would have wanted”.

The trial in Avignon is expected to last four months. Dominique Pélicot, 71, and the 50 other defendants face 20 years in prison if convicted of aggravated rape.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Angelique Chrisafis at The Guardian:

Dominique Pélicot, one of the worst sex offenders in modern French history, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging his then wife, Gisèle, and inviting dozens of men to rape her in her home in the south of France over almost a decade. The historic trial of 51 men was held in public after Gisèle Pélicot waived her right to anonymity so that “shame could change sides”. In her first public comments after the verdict, Gisèle Pélicot said she had found the trial “very difficult” and thanked all those who had supported her. She said she respected the court and its decision, and that in waiving her anonymity she had been thinking of her grandchildren. “Because they are the future, it is also for them that I led this fight,” she said. “I’m also thinking of the many victims who are not recognised, whose stories often remain in the shadows. I want you to know that we share the same battle.” Crowds outside the court in Avignon greeted her with cheers as she left the building. Alongside Dominique Pélicot, guilty verdicts were returned on Thursday for all the accused men including a nurse, a soldier, a journalist, a prison warden and delivery drivers, aged from 26 to 74. Forty-seven were convicted of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault. Pélicot’s co-defendants received jail terms of between three and 15 years. Two of these men had their jail terms suspended. Some of the sentences handed down by the panel of judges were lower than those that had been suggested by the state prosecutor. “Shame!” shouted one feminist campaigner outside the court as the sentences were delivered. Gisèle Pélicot, a 72-year-old retired logistics manager, looked on with her sons and daughter as the head judge read out the men’s sentences. She has been hailed as a feminist hero worldwide for opening the doors to the trial, and members of the public outside the courts have cheered daily for the woman who said she was “determined that things change in this society”, in particular the “macho, patriarchal society that trivialises rape”. Dominique Pélicot, 72, a retired electrician and former estate agent, was given the maximum sentence of 20 years for drugging and raping his then wife and inviting men to rape her when she was in a comatose state. The court heard that he crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her mashed potato, coffee or ice-cream and invited dozens of men to rape her over a nine-year period from 2011 in the village of Mazan, Provence, where the couple had retired.

In the Gisèle Pélicot rape trial, her ex-husband Dominique was sentenced to 20 years of jail time (too light, IMO). Dominique Pélicot and 50 other men were found guilty in their roles in the rapes.

See Also:

AP, via HuffPost: Gisèle Pélicot's Ex-Husband Found Guilty Of Rapes, All Other Charges Against Him In France

[coochiequeens]

Men say shit like women should get married to have a man who will protect them then do shit like this.

Woman, 72, 'drugged by her husband so 50 men could rape her while unconscious' appears in court after bravely waiving right to anonymity as he goes on trial along with men 'filmed having sex with her'

Gisele P opted for a public trial and waived her right to anonymity, lawyers said

Police say she suffered 92 rapes by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified

Those identified will also go on trial alongside the main suspect, Dominique P

By David Averre 2 September 2024

French woman whose husband is on trial for drugging her and allowing dozens of strangers to rape her while unconscious appeared in court for the first time after waiving her right to anonymity. 

Gisele P., 72, was seen standing in the courtroom supported by her three children to witness the opening day of the trial of Dominique P., 71, which began this morning in Avignon. 

He is accused of orchestrating a sick rape ring, using an online forum to invite a horde of men to his home in Mazan near Avignon before filming them assaulting his wife over nine years between 2011 and 2020.

Police counted a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom were identified and are being tried alongside the main suspect, a former employee at France's power utility company EDF.

Presiding judge Roger Arata announced that all the hearings would be public, granting Gisele her wish for 'complete publicity until the end' of the court case, according to her lawyer, Stephane Babonneau. 

Gisele could have opted for a trial behind closed doors given the nature of her husband's alleged crimes, but 'that's what her attackers would have wanted', another lawyer named Antoine Camus said. 

Still, the trial will be 'a horrible ordeal' for Gisele.

'For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years,' Camus said, adding that his client had 'no recollection' of the abuse which she only discovered in 2020.

Gisele P. - a French woman whose husband is on trial for drugging her and allowing dozens of strangers to rape her while unconscious - is seen arriving in court today

Dominique P. is accused of orchestrating the sick rape ring, filming strangers he met online attacking his wife while she was drugged between 2011 and 2020 Ladies let's share this face everytime men spew crap about men protecting women

The President of the Vaucluse Assises Court Roger Arata speaks at the courthouse during the trial of Dominique P. in the south of France, in Avignon, on September 2, 2024

The couple met in 1971 and married two years later before having three kids together. 

Gisele previously said her husband had asked her to try swinging - a request she refused.

But she also described him as a 'great guy' with a 'normal sexuality'. 

Their eldest son said nothing in his father's behaviour suggested any deviance and that 'he had always fulfilled his role as a father', while their daughter spoke fondly of her father's presence in her life as a young girl. 

The heinous campaign of sexual abuse masterminded by Dominique P. is said to have begun in 2011 when the couple was living near Paris, and continued after they moved to Mazan two years later.

Police began to investigate the defendant Dominique P. in September 2020 when he was caught by a security guard secretly filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping centre.

Police said they found hundreds of pictures and videos of his wife on his computer, visibly unconscious and mostly in the foetal position.

The images are alleged to show dozens of rapes in the couple's home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people roughly 20 miles from Avignon in Provence.

Investigators also found chats on a site called coco.fr, since shut down by police, in which he recruited strangers to come to their home and have intercourse with his wife.

Dominique P. later admitted to investigators that he gave his wife powerful tranquilisers, especially Temesta, an anxiety-reducing drug.

Demonstrators hold placards and smoke bombs during a protest outside the courthouse during the trial of a man accused of drugging his wife for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France, in Avignon, on September 2, 2024

Beatrice Zavarro, lawyer for the accused Dominique P, waits at the courthouse during the trial of her client accused of drugging his wife for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France, in Avignon, on September 2, 2024

The husband took part in the rapes, filmed them and encouraged the other men using degrading language, according to prosecutors.

In previous hearings, he explained how he took a range of precautions to avoid his wife or family from discovering the dark deeds.

French outlet Le Point reported how Dominique P. imposed strict rules on each of the men who he invited to rape his wife: no perfume or tobacco, cut and clean nails, hands first run under hot water so as not to risk waking the victim. 

The attackers would park a few minutes from the couple's home and undress in the kitchen. No money changed hands.

The accused rapists included a forklift driver, a fire brigade officer, a company boss and a journalist.

Some were single, others married or divorced, and some were family men. Most participated just once, but some took part up to six times. 

Their defence has been that they simply helped a libertine couple live out its fantasies, but Dominique P. told investigators that all were aware that his wife had been drugged without her knowledge.

An expert said her state 'was closer to a coma than to sleep'.

Her husband told prosecutors that only three men left the house quickly after arriving, while all others proceeded to have intercourse with his wife.

Dominique P., who said he was raped by a male nurse when he was nine, is ready to face 'his family and his wife', his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro said.

'He is ashamed of what he did, it is unforgivable,' Zavarro told reporters on Monday morning, adding that the case was 'in a form of addiction'.

'My client's line of conduct is that he recognises what he did and there has not been an ounce of protest since the beginning,' she said in comments carried by French press.

But this trial may not be his last. 

The defendant has also been charged with a 1991 murder and rape, which he denies, and an attempted rape in 1999, to which he admitted after DNA testing.

Experts said the man does not appear to be mentally ill, but reportedly concluded that had a need to feel 'all-powerful' over the female body in assessments included in court documents. 

The shocking trial is due to last until December 20

[pebblysand]

watching the french legal twitter have a very public meltdown over the Mazan trial be like

[warningsine]

They are young, old, burly, thin, black and white. Among them are firefighters, lorry drivers, soldiers, security guards, a journalist and a DJ.

These are the 50 men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at the behest of her husband, Dominique Pelicot, 72, who drugged her for a decade with prescription sleeping pills.

The fact they broadly represent a microcosm of French society means they have been dubbed Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr Everyman).

Next week they are due to be sentenced, at the end of a trial that started in September. If found guilty, collectively they face more than 600 years in jail.

A few of them act defiant, but they mostly look down as they answer questions from the judges, looking up occasionally to catch their lawyers' eyes for reassurance.

Warning: You may find some of the details of this story disturbing

Most of the 50 all come from towns and villages in a 50km (30-mile) radius of the Pelicots' own village of Mazan.

Some defence lawyers have seen in their ordinariness a valuable line of defence. "Ordinary people do extraordinary things," said Antoine Minier, a lawyer representing three defendants.

"I think almost everybody could end up in a situation - well, maybe not exactly like this one - but could be susceptible to committing a serious crime," he told the BBC.

'My body raped her, but my brain didn't'

Prosecutors have based their sentencing demands to the court on aggravating factors. How many times the defendants came to the Pelicot home, whether they touched Gisèle Pelicot sexually, and if they penetrated her.

Joseph C, 69, a retired sports coach and doting grandfather, faces four years in jail for sexual assault if found guilty. That is the most lenient sentence requested by prosecutors.

At the other end of the scale, is Romain V, 63, who faces 18 years in prison. He was knowingly HIV-positive and is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six separate occasions without wearing protection - although his lawyer told the court he had treatment for several years and couldn't have transmitted the virus.

Prosecutors have been able to go into this level of detail because, unusually for a rape trial, there is a staggering amount of evidence, as the alleged assaults were filmed over almost a decade by Dominique Pelicot.

He has admitted all the charges against him and has told the court all 50 of his co-accused are guilty too.

All the video evidence means none of the men have been able to deny they ever went to the Pelicots' home. But the majority vehemently contest the charges of aggravated rape that would incur hefty sentences.

France's rape law defines rape as any sexual act committed by "violence, coercion, threat or surprise"; it has no reference to any need for consent.

Therefore, they also argue they cannot be guilty of rape because they were unaware Gisèle Pelicot was not in a position to give her consent.

"There can be no crime without the intention to commit it," said one defence lawyer.

"My body raped her, but my brain didn't," insisted volunteer firefighter Christian L, in an example of the convoluted reasoning offered by some of the men.

The one man of the 50 who is not accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot is Jean-Pierre M, 63, who has been dubbed Dominique Pelicot's "disciple".

Having learned how to drug his wife in order to abuse her, he did so for five years and admits it.

He blames his crimes on meeting Dominique Pelicot, who he says was "reassuring, like a cousin". Prosecutors are seeking a 17-year jail term.

'Manipulated and tricked by Pelicot'

Ahmed T, a 54-year-old plumber who has been married to his childhood sweetheart for 30 years, said that if had he wanted to rape someone, he would have not chosen a woman in her 60s.

Redouane A, an unemployed man aged 40, argued that if he had set out to rape Gisèle he would not have allowed her husband to take videos.

Some also say they were intimidated by Dominique Pelicot, who one lawyer told the BBC, was an "abominable character".

In tears, male nurse Redouan E told the courtroom he was too scared of him to leave the bedroom. "Maybe you can't tell from the videos, but I was really terrified!" he told judges.

Others maintain they were offered drinks that were spiked with drugs and therefore cannot remember the encounter, although Dominique Pelicot has denied ever doing this.

The majority, however, maintain they were manipulated or tricked by Dominique Pelicot, who convinced them they were taking part in a sex game with a consensual couple.

"They were put in a situation where they were scammed," Christophe Bruschi, Joseph C's lawyer, told the BBC. "They were taken for a ride."

But Dominique Pelicot has always said he made it abundantly clear to the men that his wife was not aware of the plot.

He gave them instructions to avoid waking her up or leaving traces that they had been there – such as warming their hands before touching his wife, or not smelling of perfume or cigarettes, he said.

"They all knew, they cannot deny it."

Families scrambling for answers

Since September, the 50 men have appeared, one after the other, in front of the court in Avignon.

Usually in rape cases character investigations can take several days.

In this trial, because of the sheer number of defendants involved, they have been condensed into a few hours at most. Their lives have been dissected at record speed, often turning the court session into a litany of stories of abuse and trauma.

Simoné M, a 43-year-old construction worker, said he was raped when he was 11 by a family friend who employed him to look after cattle in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.

Father-of-four Jean-Luc L, 46, told the court how he and his family had left Vietnam on a dinghy when he was a child and lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for several years before moving to France.

Fabien S, a 39-year-old man with several previous convictions including drug dealing and sexual assault of a minor, was abused and beaten by foster parents from a very young age. Like several others, he said he only realised during psychiatrist appointments ordered by the court that his hazy, painful childhood memories actually constituted rape.

Many wives, partners and family members of the defendants were called up to give character statements. They, too, scrambled for answers as they sought to understand how the men in their lives could have ended up "caught up in this kind of situation", as one woman put it.

"I was shocked, it doesn't sound like him at all. He was the joy of my life," said the elderly father of Christian L.

The firefighter is also being investigated for possessing child abuse imagery, as are four others, and faces 16 years in jail. "Something must have happened, he must have become depressed," his father wondered aloud.

'I will always be there for him'

Corinne, the ex-wife of 54-year-old Thierry Pa, a former builder, said he had always been "kind" and "respectful" to her and their children and appeared to leave the door open for a reconciliation him.

"When they told me what he was accused of I said: 'never, that's impossible... I don't understand what he's doing here at all.'" She believed it was the death of their 18-year-old son that had led her ex-husband to fall into a deep depression, start drinking and eventually make contact with Dominique Pelicot.

"I will always be there for him, whatever happens," said the ex-girlfriend of Guyana-born Joan K. At 27, he is the youngest of the defendants and a former soldier in the French army.

He has denied raping Gisèle Pelicot on two occasions. While he knew she would be unconscious, he said he had not realised she had not given her consent.

In floods of tears, a woman called Samira said she has spent the last three and a half years "looking for answers" as to why Jérôme V had gone to the Pelicots' six times.

"We had daily intercourse, I don't understand why he had to go look elsewhere," she sobbed. She is still in a relationship with Jérôme V, who was working at a greengrocer's at the time of his arrest.

He is one of the few who have admitted to raping Gisèle, saying he liked the idea of having "free rein" over her – but blamed it however on his "uncontrollable sexuality".

Gisèle Pelicot: They raped me in full conscience

Many former and current partners of the defendants have undergone tests to see if they too had been drugged like Gisèle. One woman said she would "always have a terrible doubt" that the "respectful, thoughtful, sweet man" she knew had abused her too without her knowledge.

Since the start of the trial, much has been made of the need to find an element that ties all these men together.

A common denominator – beside the fact that all the men went to the Pelicots' of their own free will - "remains nowhere to be found," Gisèle's own lawyers have said.

But there is one factor all the defendants indisputably have in common: they all made the conscious choice not to go to the police.

Firefighter Jacques C, 73, said he had considered it but "then life just carried on", while electrician Patrice N, 55, said he "didn't want to waste the whole day at the police station".

In the early days of the trial, Gisèle Pelicot was asked whether she thought it was legitimate to think the men had been manipulated by her husband.

She shook her head: "They didn't rape me with a gun to their heads. They raped me in full conscience."

Almost as an afterthought, she asked: "Why didn't they go to the police? Even an anonymous phone call could have saved my life."

"But not one did," she said after a pause. "Not a single one of them."

[rebellum]

I just learned about the Gisele Pelicot case.. Oh my god. She is so brave for making the trial public. Those men should never know peace. Wherever they go, for the rest of their lives, people should know who they are.

and he only got caught because of another crime. this is not the only time this thing has happened, he's just the only one to be caught doing it. she would have just never known. there are, doubtlessly, other people in the world doing this, who would never be caught. thats terrifying.

seriously STRONG trigger warning for rape, sexual violence, and rape culture, if you are in doubt about your emotional ability to handle it, I recommend you do NOT look up the case, and to block "Gisele Pelicot" "Gisèle Pélicot" and "Mazan rapes"

i feel sick, and kind of wished i never found out about the case

[head-post]

Gisèle Pelicot speaking after her ex-husband found guilty of rape, sentenced to 20 years

Gisèle Pelicot spoke of her “very difficult ordeal” after 51 men were found guilty in a drug and rape case, according to AP News.

Your messages moved me deeply, and they gave me the strength to come back, every day, and survive through these long daily hearings. This trial was a very difficult ordeal.

The men were convicted by a court in the southern French city of Avignon on Thursday and received three to 20 years in prison. Pelicot expressed support for other victims of sexual violence whose cases had not drawn as much attention.

I want you to know that we share the same fight.

Pelicot became an icon for many women in France and the rest of the world when she demanded that all evidence be heard in open trial.

I never regretted making this decision. I have trust in our capacity to collectively project ourselves toward a future where all, women and men, can live in harmony, with respect and mutual understanding. Thank you.

The court sentenced her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, to 20 years in prison for drugging and raping her, as well as allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious. The sentence was the maximum possible under French law and Dominique, 72, would not be eligible to ask for parole until at least two-thirds of the sentence had been served.

The lawyer of Dominique Pelicot, Béatrice Zavarro, said she would consider an appeal, but also expressed hope that Gisèle Pelicot would find comfort in the court’s judgements.

I wanted Mrs. Pelicot to be able to emerge from these hearings in peace, and I think that the verdicts will contribute to this relief for Mrs. Pelicot.

Accusation details

Of the 50 people charged with rape, only one was acquitted, but he was instead found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Prosecutors had asked for 10 to 18 years for the accused, except for Dominique Pelicot. However, the court was more lenient, with many sentenced to less than ten years in prison.

All of the defendants were accused of participating in Dominique Pelicot’s filthy fantasies of rape and violence, which were played out in the couple’s retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.

Dominique first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard busted him for secretly filming women’s skirts. Police subsequently discovered his library of home images documenting years of abuse of his wife. Those included more than 20,000 photos and videos saved on computer discs and catalogued in folders labelled “abuse,” “her rapists,” “night alone” etc.

Investigators counted 72 different rapists in the video, but were unable to identify them all. While some of the defendants, including Dominique Pelicot, pleaded guilty to rape, many did not, even despite the video evidence.

The hearings sparked a wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be broadened to include a specific reference to consent. Some put the blame on Dominique, claiming he had misled them into thinking they were taking part in a consensual perversion.

Read more HERE

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

Full text below cut, trigger warning for the whole thing.

A French man has been accused of drugging his wife and the recording at least 51 men rape her while she slept over the period of 10 years.

Dominique P, a pensioner who had been married for over 50 years, allegedly mixed the anti-anxiety drug Lorazepam into his wife's evening meal, La Monde reported.

He would then invite his "guests" into their house in Mazan to rape his sleeping wife between 2011 and 2020.

A total of 51 men between the ages of 26-73 have been identified, arrested and charged with rape following an inquiry launched in 2020 in the southern city of Avignon.

The suspect reportedly found the men on “a son insu” - an active French internet forum where members discuss performing sexual acts on women without their consent and often drugged.

The exchanges on the web forum were erased after being linked to a criminal investigation into paedophile, racist or anti-Semitic content and the sale of illicit substances.

Law enforcement officials learned about the videos during a preliminary investigation three years ago when the suspect was caught trying to film woman in a changing room with a hidden camera.

The videos were found on the man's computer, where they were meticulously archived in a file called "Abuses". The titles of the hundreds of videos indicate a date, a first name and the nature of the actions, according to the French newspaper.

Investigators have identified 92 cases of sexual assault of the woman by 83 suspects, but are yet to identify all the men.

Tobacco and perfume were banned by the suspect in order to avoid strong smells that could waken his wife. The men were asked to wash their hands in warm water to avoid sudden temperature change and were made to undress in the kitchen to avoid leaving clothes in the bedroom.

The "guests" had to park near a school and walk in the dark to the house to avoid raising neighbours' suspicion.

Some claimed they had no idea his wife has not consented to the sexual acts, while one person denied it was rape, saying: “It’s his wife, he does what he likes with her.”

According to prosecutors in Avignon, the suspect insisted that "none of the men who came to his house gave up going through with sexual acts on his wife given her state".

"He never used violence or threats against anyone so that rapes would be committed. Each individual was in possession of his free will to stop these acts and leave,” the prosecutors said.

When the woman was asked to talk about her husband in November 2020 during the initial investigation, she described him as a "great guy" and "kind and caring". She said he tried to get to agree to partner-swapping but she refused as “she didn’t like to be touched without having feelings (for someone)”.

When the police informed her of the tapes, she reportedly began pieceing together the past. The woman said she had flashbacks and that the drugging could have been the reason behind her frequent fatigue and “absent-mindedness”.

Medical examinations found she had been infected with four sexually transmitted diseases.

If the investigating magistrate follows the prosecutor’s indictment, a "historic trial" is expected to take place early next year with 52 defendants in the same box.

The woman has filed for a divorce.

[biarritzzz]

The British government along with the rest of western European governments choose to endanger their own population by importing the most dangerously violent foreign trash into their countries and then protecting them at all costs.

It gets worse (if that was possible):

Oh look. What a shock. We are all shocked that browns side with their own. What a huge revelation that is.

The muslim women’s network complained that too little attention was paid to muslim girls also abused by Pakistani gangs

In other words: these cunts didn’t care when white girls were being raped and tortured by Paki trash, they only opened their mouth when muslim girls faced the same and probably whined about ‘racism’ as per usual.

In case you still believed in female solidarity.

And of course: white people are the enemy. Yep they’re not even hiding it anymore.

White girls = kuffar sluts. But remember: anti-white racism doesn’t exist.

The establishment and media are all on the side of these brown invaders. Admitting they were wrong about everything is not an option. So they cover it up or they simply don’t report on it, unlike the Mazan trial which got ample coverage, including from international news outlets.

Brits should be rioting about this massive scandal. It’s horrific. Some victims and their parents were even arrested by the police under dubious charges. Don’t tell me this isn’t two-tier policing.

-> Every single brown and black needs to be deported out of Europe. Every single one. Man, woman, child, it doesn’t matter how supposedly ‘kind’ and ‘integrated’ they are. They’re not, never are and never will be.

[my-vanishing]

Between 2011 and 2020, Dominique Pelicot secretly drugged his now ex-wife, Gisèle, with tranquilizers and sleeping pills. Unbeknownst to her, he invited dozens of men–recruited online–to assault and rape her while she was unconscious in their home in Mazan, France.

This week, after enduring a grueling four-month trial, Gisèle addressed the courtroom in Avignon following the sentencing of her ex-husband and 50 accomplices, who received prison terms ranging from three to 20 years.

She said, “I want you to know that we share the same fight. Your messages moved me deeply, and they gave me the strength to come back, every day, and survive through these long daily hearings. This trial was a very difficult ordeal.” “It’s also for them that I led this fight,” she said of her grandchildren. “I wanted all of society to be a witness to the debates that took place here. I never regretted making this decision. I have trust in our capacity to collectively project ourselves toward a future where all, women and men, can live in harmony, with respect and mutual understanding. Thank you.”

[someone-will-remember-us]

A young vineyard worker accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six occasions over four years when she had been drugged by her husband also proposed drugging and raping his own mother, a court has heard.

Charly A, 30, is one of 51 men on trial over the rape of Gisèle Pelicot, whose then husband, Dominique Pelicot, crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and invited dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020 in the village of Mazan in Provence. Dominique Pelicot has admitted the charges, telling the court: “I am a rapist.”

Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a former logistics manager, has become a feminist hero after insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and the other men be held in public to raise awareness of the use of drugs and sedation to rape women, having said: “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.”

Charly A, a vineyard worker who later packed lorries for a cement company, is accused of driving to the Pelicots’ home on six occasions between 2016 and 2020 to rape Gisèle Pelicot in her bedroom alongside Dominique Pelicot, who had drugged her into a comatose state.

On the first occasion, Charly A was aged 22 and Gisèle Pelicot was aged 64. Charly A and Dominique Pelicot are also accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in her bed on the night of her 66th birthday.

Charly A denied rape, saying: “I never had the intention to rape.” He said Dominique Pelicot, whom he had met online, had invited him to the couple’s home and told him that Gisèle Pelicot would be “pretending to be asleep”. He said: “I was told it was a scenario in which she was asleep. In that scenario, she was consenting. For me, I didn’t intend to rape. I didn’t want to rape her, I didn’t want to do something bad to that family.”

Charly A had spent part of his childhood in Mazan and lived a 30-minute drive away.

Video evidence showed a whispered conversation in Gisèle Pelicot’s bedroom between the two men, in which they discuss a plan to drug and rape Charly A’s mother in the same way. In the footage, Charly A says he will give an address and date for this to take place. Both men told the court this conversation took place, but said they did not rape Charly A’s mother.

Charly A’s mother, a personal care assistant and mother of three, had lived in Mazan and in different parts of the Vaucluse area of southern France.

Charly A was asked in court why he had suggested he and Dominique Pelicot rape his mother. He said he was afraid of Dominique Pelicot, who had asked him if there was another woman in his family or entourage who he would like to rape or see raped.

Charly A said he suggested his own mother “because it was the only woman who came to mind”. He said Dominique Pelicot was “insistent”, so he gave him a photo of his mother. Charly A told the court he had never intended to go through with it and kept making excuses. He said: “I gave the excuse that my little brother was home and my mother had to look after him, so he couldn’t come. Because I wasn’t OK with it.”

Dominique Pelicot gave Charly A three sedative tablets wrapped in silver foil in order for him to sedate his mother, explaining that he should crush them into her food. Charly A told the court that he threw the pills out of his car window that night and never used them. Dominique Pelicot contradicted this, saying that Charly A had instead returned the drugs to him.

Asked in court if he was angry with his mother or hated her, Charly A said he was not. He told the court: “I love my mum as any son loves their mum, nothing special.”

Police testing on a hair sample from Charly A’s mother showed a very low presence of sedatives consistent with a sporadic or single use of sedatives. She told police she had never used that type of medication. “I don’t know how it could be in my body. I don’t understand,” she said.

A court psychiatrist who interviewed Charly A said his “very intense use of pornography” from his early teenage years – including what the psychiatrist called pornographic cliches about mothers and older women – had played a role in his objectification of women.

The psychiatrist said the fact that Charly A regularly went to the Pelicots’ home in December, around Christmas time and in January, could have been related to his depression at having a dysfunctional family, affected by divorce and separation, around the holiday period.

Other accused men have said they were lonely at Christmas. One 63-year-old who is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot but denied it, said he was “lonely” as “Christmas was approaching and I was going to be on my own again”. Another man, 37, who is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot one New Year’s Eve and also denies it, said he “had nothing else to do” because his brothers hadn’t invited him to their New Year’s party.

The trial in Avignon continues until 20 December.

(archive)

[londonsolong]

PLEASE go document yourself about the Mazan trial case, about what Gisèle Pelicot been through. it’s documented also in english, even though if it’s a french case. it’s so important. PLEASE