The lawyer for Dominique Pelicot, the septuagenarian who drugged, raped and had his wife raped by dozens of men in the south-east of France, tried this Wednesday, November 26 to explain the reasons that led him to become the “conductor” of this decade of rape.
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For an hour, Me Béatrice Zavarro tried to show the human behind the one she calls “ the other Dominique “. Understand the pervert behind the good husband. “ Despite myself, I became the devil’s advocate ”, she began. Behind her desk, microphone in hand, her voice firm despite some hesitation, she returned to her client’s traumatic childhood, before he plunged into the ” perversity “, this ” gear » which led him to drug, rape and have his wife raped at their home in Mazan by dozens of men recruited on the internet.
Repeating a phrase used by his client during his first interrogation in court – “ we are not born perverse, we become one » – she estimated that “ this formula makes the other Dominic, the one for whom I plead today. The one who is divisive “. “ This other Dominique is endowed with a certain perversity, but before that, there is a man », declared Me Zavarro, facing his client, on the very day of his 72nd birthday.
She thus recalled the “ three facts that will mark him forever » : « the deleterious family climate » in which he grew up, with a father « authoritarian, tyrannical », then these two sexual assaults that he says he suffered in his youth, a rape by a nurse during hospitalization when he was a child and his forced participation in the rape of a young woman on a construction site when he was an apprentice.
Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer recalled that her client “ loved more than anything ” his ex-wife, but that the couple’s move to the south of France and the fact that she ” could satisfy all his fantasies » could have been triggering elements « his criminal pattern “. She finally concluded her argument by reading the passage from a letter from her client to his wife, three children and grandchildren: “ without you, I am nothing “. “ I know that elsewhere, we will see each other again. We can, I hope, talk about all that again », she then continued, reading an extract from a poem by Dominique Pelicot to her wife.
The verdict is expected on December 20 at the latest.
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