After three and a half months of hearings, the Mazan rape trial ends. Three and a half months of testimony and pleadings revealing the contours of an extraordinary case. Fifty-one men tried, and a main defendant, Dominique Pelicot, accused of having drugged Gisèle, his now ex-wife, for a decade in order to rape her and deliver her to several dozen men recruited on the Internet. These defendants with diverse profiles – they are between 27 and 74 years old, come from all professions and social origins – took turns at the bar or at the microphone of the detainees’ box. This December 19, the Vaucluse criminal court delivered its verdict. Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to twenty years of criminal imprisonment, accompanied by two thirds of a security sentence. No acquittal was pronounced for his co-defendants, all of whom were found guilty, with sentences ranging from three years’ imprisonment, two of which were suspended, to fifteen years’ imprisonment.
For weeks, the country will have followed the trial of these ordinary men, in a case that has become the symbol of rape under chemical subjugation. Gisèle Pelicot’s refusal to go behind closed doors gave her case enormous media coverage. Regularly compared to the Bobigny trial, which opened the way in 1972 to the legalization of abortion, the “Mazan trial” went beyond the particular cases of these protagonists to become a societal subject. Beyond the individual role in the legal procedure, it can question society as a whole. Analysis with Me Basile Ader, lawyer at the Paris bar, curator of the Paris bar museum and vice-president of the French association for the history of justice, and one of the authors of the collective work The influence of major criminal cases on the law (ed. Dalloz, 2024).
L’Express: The impact of the Pelicot affair has been colossal in the media in recent weeks. Have we witnessed what we can sometimes easily call a “trial for history”?
Basile Ader : This is probably a “trial for history” in two dimensions. First is the question of consent and rape by chemical sedation. The second very interesting aspect, in my opinion, relates to the demonstration of the judicial process. Justice has shown that it works well. We owe this mainly to the courage of Gisèle Pelicot, who had the desire to expose this affair for all to see. In certain respects, it echoes the desire, 50 years ago, that Gisèle Halimi had to expose the problems linked to clandestine abortion, punishable by law, and the social and medical inequalities that it engendered. There is nothing better than trials for these great moments of societal explanation. It’s almost civilizational. Justice is one of the primary sovereign duties of the State because it is what unites the community.
If the primitive tribes decided to lay down their arms and unite, it is also because they were guaranteed that justice would be served. It is a fundamental human need for justice to be done and for it to be equitable. This is what people in states where justice is arbitrary experience the worst. A recurring feeling of injustice inhabits them. The duty of a State is therefore to show its justice. This allows each citizen to monitor the application of sentences and equality in this treatment. The exemplary factor is also very important. In the Pelicot case, it was fundamental to show that the absence of consent constitutes rape, and what it entails in legal matters.
The question of closed doors – or rather its absence – is therefore fundamental…
The majority of trials are not behind closed doors. A case must concern a minor, or involve rape or sexual assault for the closed session to be prescribed. If the victim is an adult, it depends on their wishes, as we saw with the Mazan trial. In the rest of the cases, the other trials must be public, because this is the guarantee of fair justice, which presupposes contradiction, having the right to be heard, to remain silent, and this, under the gaze of the public… This is essential. When justice is secret, it is most often unfair. This is the case of political or religious justice.
Accessibility to trials is therefore important. In two thirds of democratic countries, trials are filmed – in Italy, Great Britain, the United States, Australia for example… In France, we are very timid on the issue. We have banned cameras from courtrooms since 1954. The cameras had so cluttered the small courtroom during the Dominici trial – a criminal case which shook the Alpes de Haute-Provence in 1952 – the flashes were blinding, uncontrollable , that a bill purely and simply banning their presence had been adopted. It was not until 2021 that a small reopening took place with the adoption of the Dupond-Moretti law, which authorizes the filming of certain trials for educational purposes, but under drastic conditions.
I am campaigning for courthouses to be much more open than they are today. That the trials be filmed, too, because the general public needs to know how justice is done. Once we understand how it is rendered, the behavior can change. This case today provides a perfect illustration. And it’s thanks to the courage of Gisèle Pelicot! She had the right to anonymity: the 1980 Rape Act requires journalists not to name or identify victims of rape or sexual assault. She did not make this choice. Thanks to her, we were able to know exactly how the trial took place. There is nothing more unifying, calming and consistent with the social pact than knowing that justice is well done.
The trial is indeed often compared to that of Bobigny in 1972, and to the role that Gisèle Halimi’s pleading played in the progress of women’s rights. So is this comparison legitimate?
We took up a case to shine a spotlight on a subject. The trial is a natural forum on a real problem: in 1972, it was the question of clandestine abortions reserved for the richest, the appalling conditions in which certain women were butchered by angel makers. The Bobigny affair revealed a real concern linked to the condition of women. The Pelicot case does the same thing, but with the question of consent and chemical submission. According to certain defendants and what their lawyers argued, the reality of Ms. Pelicot’s consent had not completely entered people’s consciences. There was here the idea that as the husband, Dominique Pelicot, had proposed it, his wife necessarily agreed. This is a very archaic belief, but one that still exists in our society. Here, I am not sure that legislative development is necessary – texts already exist after all. On the other hand, I think that the publicity given to this trial will considerably change mentalities and awareness of what rape can be.
Are these changes the prerogative of primarily societal affairs, or are we finding equally high-profile trials in financial or terrorist cases, for example? ?
The Bobigny affair is not the only example! Take the Patrick Henry case. This case became the death penalty trial. The abolition was subsequently carried out by the lawyer who had saved his head, Robert Badinter. Another example, this time concerning a development more societal than legislative: the Cofidis trial, a major publicized trial in 2006, provided insight into the habits and customs of doping in cycling. Everyone knew more or less about these excesses, but we had never spoken about them so openly – and as much – as during this trial. This legal case put a stop to the most visible doping in the Tour de France.
A year later, in 2007, the Erika trial – named after an oil tanker which was shipwrecked in 1999 off the coast of Brittany – established ecological damage, and constituted a real event in environmental criminal law. In 2018, the appearance of farmer Cédric Herrou in court for having taken care of migrants in the Franco-Italian Roya valley brought the issue of solidarity crime to the forefront. More recently, the Mila affair, in 2023, where a young girl was harassed on the Internet after making comments about Islam, helped to shed light on cyberharassment and the absence of impunity for anonymous harassers. Thanks to these trials, we deliver justice and change mentalities. It will be the same thing for the Mazan rape trial, there is a before and an after.
Beyond the individual sentence, the trial is there to provoke reflection, to impregnate consciences. There are times when we need to know. To take a historical example, see the trial of Klaus Barbie. He probably arrived too late, in May 1987. But he served his purpose. We revisited the role of the occupation authorities, that of Barbie… At Papon’s trial in Bordeaux, we revisited the role of the collaborationist French state. It’s not nothing! The perfect example is that of the Nuremberg trials. Perfectly filmed, benefiting from easy access to cameramen, it lasted six months. It was a very long trial, where it was necessary to discuss the role of Nazi dignitaries, but it was exemplary in the field of international criminal justice. It was also a trial for history.
A legal columnist recently noted on France Inter, regarding the Mazan affair, that “a trial is a debate, not a conference”. What do you think?
To return to the metaphor of the trial as a forum: that of Bobigny was the first time that witnesses were brought in who were not directly linked to the fact, who came to testify about the consequences of a law. This is also what Badinter did in the trial of Patrick Henry, where people testified about what the death penalty was. The procedure then goes beyond the strict framework of what must be judged, precisely because the question of the legitimacy of the law whose application was requested deserved to be debated. The trial does justice, certainly, but it can have another merit: that of discussion, of changing the law at a given moment.
There are thus times when the trial must be the occasion for a platform. We know this well in press law. When Zola writes “J’accuse”, it is because he sees clearly that an innocent man has been in prison for four years, paying for an army which refuses to recognize its error. He knows well that he is exposing himself, that the lines he publishes in Dawn will earn him a trial and probably a conviction. But he “sacrifices”, somewhere, to ensure that, as a last resort, his defamation trial allows finally public explanations on the Dreyfus affair. And it is at this trial that Dreyfus’s innocence finally comes to light. This is the tipping point of the affair. And thanks to perfectly public justice.
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