Dominique Pélicot spoke one last time at the Mazan rape trial this Monday, December 16. He apologized to Gisèle Pélicot and supported her in the face of suspicions from certain defense lawyers.
The Mazan rape trial is coming to an end. The session was adjourned this Monday, December 16 after the last statements of the 50 accused present, out of the 51 tried, and the hearing will not resume until Thursday morning, at the earliest, for the Vaucluse criminal court to deliver its verdict. The floor returned to the respondents for the final hours of debate. Everyone had the opportunity to express themselves one last time: around ten accused presented apologies to Gisèle Pélicot, while the others, notably those pleading for acquittal, indicated that they had “nothing to add” after the three and a half months of trial.
As is often the case, it was Dominique Pélicot’s speech that was expected. The 71-year-old man, the main accused in this case, is on trial for having raped, drugged and delivered his wife to other individuals without her knowledge for around ten years. Once again, the accused apologized to his ex-wife, his three children and seven grandchildren. “I regret what I did, [les] made them suffer for 4 years, I ask them for forgiveness”, he declared, repeating a refrain repeated several times during the trial without it reaching the members of the Pélicot family.
If he apologized to his wife, who attended each hearing and whose abuse was discussed publicly – she herself refused to allow the trial to be held behind closed doors – Dominique Pélicot also “greeted the courage” of Gisèle Pélicot for “having endured innuendoes of complicity” from the defense lawyers. On several occasions during the trial, the mother saw her victim status called into question by the lawyers of a handful of defendants: they questioned her participation in a staging as if it were a question of ‘a fantasy; they questioned her lack of reaction or, on the contrary, the spasms visible on videos of rape and sexual assault as if they were proof that she was conscious.
Maneuvers designed to defend the accused who, for the most part, considered during the hearings to have participated in libertine and swinging relationships organized and consented to by Dominique Pélicot and his ex-wife. A position swept aside by the main accused who insisted throughout the trial that the men who came to rape his wife were well aware that she was drugged.
Gisèle Pélicot’s responses to her ex-husband and the defense
Gisèle Pélicot herself reacted to these suspicions of complicity. As early as September 18, the main victim of the Mazan rapes had taken the stand to deplore the insinuations of certain defense lawyers: “Since I arrived in this courtroom, I have felt humiliated. They call me an alcoholic , that I put myself in such a state of intoxication that I am an accomplice of Mr. Pelicot”. “I have the impression that I am the culprit, and that behind me the fifty [accusés] are victims”, she added in reaction to the defense before ironically: “Besides, they should sit in my place…” She also reaffirmed the clear absence of consent and the fact that this does not had embarrassed any of the accused: “Not for a second did I give my consent to Mr. Pelicot nor to these men behind”.
A strength of character and words which had forced lawyers to reconsider some of their statements, in particular Me Guillaume De Palma on his sentence “there is rape and rape”. However, new suspicions about the complicity of Gisèle Pélicot were raised on December 10 by a defense lawyer. Without the possibility of a response, the septuagenarian left the courtroom in silence, but visibly very angry according to a journalist from Franceinfo.
If Dominique Pélicot praised the courage of his ex-wife for having endured such speeches, many people who came to attend the trial daily congratulated, supported and applauded the courage of Gisèle Pélicot to attend the trial and see the faces of the accused again. . And the septuagenarian, if she was receptive to support before the criminal court, did not bat an eyelid in the face of her ex-husband’s last words. Recognized or not, this courage is paid for today by exhaustion according to the confidences of those around him. BFMTV : she is “exhausted after almost four months of hearing. She has constantly heard the accused evade responsibility by posing as victims”. and now trusts the criminal court.”