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Pelicot gang rape trial ends with 51 guilty verdicts – and there are fears justice was not served

Pelicot gang rape trial ends with 51 guilty verdicts – and there are fears justice was not served


Avignon, France
CNN

A horrific, months-long mass rape and drug trial ended in France on Thursday, with Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men found guilty of raping or sexually assaulting his former wife, Gisèle Pelicot.

Dominique Pelicot, 72, who asked dozens of strangers to rape Gisèle while she was unconscious, received the maximum sentence of 20 years for aggravated rape. 48 other men on trial were found guilty of aggravated rape, two of them of sexual assault.

The trial – which shocked France and pushed the country to examine a culture grappling with pervasive misogyny and systemic sexual assault – has led women to demand a change in the way gender-based violence is dealt with .

They were able to do this because of Gisèle Pelicot’s unusual decision to give up her anonymity to make the trial public – an act that many have described as heroic. For months, Gisèle faced her abusers in court, letting the world see the horrors she endured at the hands of her husband and dozens of other rapists for over a decade.

Under French law, Gisèle could have requested that the trial take place behind closed doors. Instead, she called for it to be done publicly, saying she hoped it would help other women speak out and show other victims of sexual assault and rape that they have nothing to be ashamed of.

After the verdict was announced in front of the courtroom in Avignon, southern France, Gisèle emphasized her solidarity with other survivors of sexual assault.

“I think of all the unknown victims of stories that often take place in secret. I want you to know that we share the same struggle,” she said.

The 72-year-old also stressed that she has “never regretted” the decision to go public and said the messages from supporters had given her the “strength” needed to carry on.

French artist and activist Voltuan holds a sign that reads in French:

While Dominique Pelicot received the maximum sentence allowed in France for aggravated rape, others who visited Pelicot’s house multiple times, such as Romain V. and Charly A., received 15 and 13 years in prison respectively. Many of the other rapists received shorter prison sentences than prosecutors expected – including some who were released on suspended sentences.

Some gasped in the courtroom as Jacques C., who received a five-year suspended sentence, was read out.

Nedeljka Macan, a resident of Mazan, the small town where the crimes took place, told CNN the sentences were an “insult.”

A source familiar with the case said the judges deliberately wanted to differentiate sentences to show a difference between the seriousness of the crimes. The source told CNN that she also hopes to limit the number of appeals filed by imposing different sentences.

Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro, told reporters on Thursday that her legal team was considering filing an appeal but had not yet made a decision, adding that she felt her client had been made a scapegoat in the trial.

But there is evidence that Dominique played a central role in orchestrating the crimes.

He recruited the men to rape his then-wife for years on the now-defunct “dating site” Coco.fr. He used the chat room called “Without Her Knowledge” in which he exchanged pictures of an unconscious Gisèle before switching to Skype and text messages to arrange the meeting with his accomplices.

Gisèle testified that she was completely unaware of her husband’s actions. Over time, the frequent sedatives and sexual abuse took a physical toll. Her husband accompanied her on several doctor’s visits, during which she complained of memory loss and abdominal pain, according to court documents.

It was only after Dominique was arrested at a local supermarket in September 2020 for filming the skirts of female customers, for which he was convicted, that his networks of crime came to light. Pelicot received an eight-month suspended prison sentence for this offense.

During the upskirting investigation, police officers confiscated his hard drive, laptop and phones and found hundreds of images and videos of Gisèle’s rape, opening one of the worst sex crimes cases in modern French history.

This courtroom sketch shows convicted rapist Dominique Pelicot on the final day of his trial on Thursday in Avignon, France.

At the start of the trial, Gisèle questioned her rapists, many of whom said they believed her husband’s consent was enough.

“Rape is rape,” she said in court in November. “If you walk into a bedroom and see a motionless body, at what point (do you decide) not to react…why didn’t you immediately go and report it to the police?”

She said she would never forgive her former husband.

The process is complete. But the result has left many angry and disillusioned, including the children of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot. They say such a sentence fails to recognize the seriousness of the rapists’ crimes and underlines France’s shoddy approach to combating sexual violence.

Olympe Desanges, a women’s rights activist, told CNN: “As a woman and as a feminist, I feel disappointed and humiliated by these rulings.”

Sarah McGrath, CEO of Women for Women France, told CNN that France “is notorious for its fairly lax punishments.”

“We have a really problematic justice system when it comes to hearing cases of this nature. “Women in France simply have no trust in the French justice system,” she said, pointing out that only 10% of rape victims even report the crime to the justice system. And only 1 to 4 percent of these reports result in a conviction.

CNN’s Caroline Baum, Antoinette Radford and Kathy Rose O’Brien contributed to this report.

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