While the co-defendants in the Mazan affair take the stand, the president of the court wanted to limit the broadcast of videos of the rapes suffered by Gisèle Pélicot. This decision was debated this Friday and the magistrate did not win his case.
The trial in the Mazan rape case continues. The co-defendants, tried for “aggravated rape”, take the stand. Gisèle Pélicot, drugged and delivered by her husband to strangers for years, decided not to request a closed session for the trial and agreed to the broadcast of the images of the abuse filmed by her husband. Through this, she wishes to raise awareness about chemical submission and sexual violence. The victim’s wishes were, however, called into question by the president of the Vaucluse criminal court, but after the challenge from the victim’s lawyers, the conditions of broadcast were debated this Friday, October 4.
The controversy began on September 19, when the first broadcast of a video took place, found in Dominique Pélicot’s files, showing men abusing Gisèle Pélicot. Classified under the name “Cunni et pipe Jacques”, “Jacques fingering” and “Pipe moi”, three short extracts were broadcast in the courtroom in front of the entire assembly made up of the parties to the trial, but also journalists and people who came to watch the trial. Jacques, the oldest of the co-defendants, 72 years old, does not recognize rape but “sexual abuse”. The last video appears as a forced fellatio by Dominique Pélicot himself. Snoring from the victim, clearly unconscious, is heard in the images, reports 20 minutes.
The day after this broadcast which shook the entire assembly, the president of the court unilaterally declared that only the parties present at the trial could attend the next viewings. This therefore concerns the civil party and defense lawyers as well as the public prosecutor, excluding journalists and the public. He also did not want the “sex videos”, as he called them, to be systematically broadcast for each accused, wishing to favor “case by case”. “I indicated that videos will be shown if necessary for the manifestation of the truth and that at that time, the room will be evacuated, the connection with the broadcast room cut and the broadcasts reserved for the parties and in court,” he said, as reported by BFMTV.
A decision in favor of the defense?
Gisèle Pélicot’s lawyers then, on September 30, contested such a decision. For them, the case relies heavily on these videos, thus making it possible to confront the co-accused with their actions. For the majority of them, they deny having intentionally raped Gisèle Pélicot and claim to have been trapped by her husband. The latter, who under the influence of drugs does not remember anything, wishes, for her part, that the videos be broadcast in front of the court and the journalists, but without the public.
On the side of Dominique Pélicot, no opposition was expressed. “The broadcast of these videos in the presence of the press remains the responsibility of Madame Pelicot, so Monsieur Pelicot can only comply with this requirement,” replied her lawyer Me Béatrice Zavarro to France 3 Provence-Alpes, who judges this “necessary” diffusion. The ex-husband of Gisèle Pélicot maintains that all the co-accused were aware that his wife was drugged without her knowledge.
Conversely, the defense stepped into the breach, supporting the decision of the president of the court. “I don’t need to see a murder live to know that it’s terrible, I have a hard time seeing what it would bring to the debate,” retorted Me Carine Monzat, lawyer for one of the accused. . The defense, in fact, denounced a “nauseating display” and an act of “voyeurism”. If the defense opposed the public broadcast of the images, it is because it would be in its interest and that of the accused who plead not guilty according to the judicial press association. “Mr. Arata acceded to a request from certain defense lawyers, who of course have every interest in journalists not being present to see their clients in their works, to kick us out in the name of “indecent and shocking” images”, lamented the association in a press release.
Not only to serve the defense, the restrictions on the broadcast of images amount to considering that Gisèle Pélicot is at the origin of a “public disturbance” by refusing the closed session, believes the journalist and feminist activist Anna Toumazoff on BFMTV. By not broadcasting the images of abuse “we are hiding the modus operandi” regrets Me Isabelle Steyer, lawyer specializing in cases of feminicide and violence against women. “These videos are what the rapist asks of the raped woman. Why would we keep silent about a rape scene? It’s information because, more broadly, these images destroy the image of the good father of the family” used as a defense by the accused, and more widely in many rape cases.