French mass rape trial sentencing soon

French mass rape trial sentencing soon | Daily Tribune

Avignon, France (afp) — With evidence over in the trial of a man who drugged his wife for years so he could invite dozens of strangers to abuse her, French prosecutors will from Monday set out their sentencing requests to judges.

Chief defendant Dominique Pelicot has since September been in the dock in southern city Avignon along with 49 other men for organizing the rapes and sexual abuse of his now ex-wife Gisele Pelicot.

The case has shocked a France still working through its version of the MeToo movement, with the latest demonstrations calling for increased protection against sexual violence bringing out tens of thousands on Saturday.

Its impact has been relayed around the world, with 57 of the 138 media organizations covering the trial from outside France.

On Thursday, the president of Chile’s parliament hailed Gisele Pelicot’s “courage and dignity,” calling her “an ordinary citizen who has taught the whole world a lesson.”

Beyond Dominique Pelicot, who has admitted to all of the charges, prosecutors must decide on appropriate potential punishments for the other defendants, men aged 26 to 74 and from all walks of life.

Many argued in court that they believed Dominique Pelicot’s claim they were participating in a libertine fantasy, in which his then-wife had consented to sexual contact and was only pretending to be asleep.

Among them, 33 have also claimed they were not in their right minds when they abused or raped Gisele Pelicot — a defense not backed up by any of the psychological reports compiled by court-appointed experts.

Sentencing requests are slated to take three full days in the court’s agenda, with prosecutors themselves estimating an average of 15 minutes per defendant.

As 11 weeks of hearings about the facts of the case drew to a close last week, Gisele Pelicot’s lawyer Antoine Camus called for “truth and justice” to be rendered to the plaintiff as well as her three children, David, Caroline and Florian, her step-children Celine and Aurore, and her grandchildren.

The court’s five judges will not issue their ruling on the sentences until late December. The serious rape charges leveled at most of the accused carry a maximum sentence of 20 years.

As the orchestrator of his ex-wife’s abuse, Dominique Pelicot appears likely to receive the full penalty.

He has himself said he wants to go to prison for drugging Gisele Pelicot with anti-anxiety drugs regularly from July 2011 to October 2020, leaving her vulnerable to abuse by strangers recruited online.

Dominique Pelicot documented the crimes extensively in photos and videos later discovered by police after he was caught filming up women’s skirts in public.