Pelicot mass rape trial ends with 51 guilty verdicts – and fears justice hasn’t been served

By Saskya Vandoorne, Kara Fox and Niamh Kennedy, CNN

Avignon, France (CNN) — A horrifying, monthslong mass rape and drugging trial concluded in France Thursday, with Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men all found guilty of the rape or sexual assault of his former wife Gisèle Pelicot.

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

The trial – which has shocked France and has pushed the country to examine a culture struggling with pervasive misogyny and systemic sexual assault – has galvanized women to demand a change in the way it approaches gender-based violence.

They were able to do so because of the unusual decision Gisèle Pelicot took in waving her anonymity to make the trial public – an act many have called heroic. For months, Gisèle faced her abusers in court, allowing the world to see the horrors that she’d endured by her husband and dozens of other rapists for over a decade.

Under French law, Gisèle could have asked for the trial to be kept behind closed doors. Instead, she asked for it be held in public, saying she hoped it would help other women speak up and show other victims of sexual assault and rape that they have nothing to be ashamed of.

Speaking after the verdicts were handed down outside the courtoom in Avignon, southern France, Gisèle underscored her solidarity with other sexual assault survivors.

“I think of all the unknown victims of stories which often unfold in the shadows. I want you to know we share the same fight,” she said.

The 72-year-old also stressed that she “had never regretted” decision to go public, saying the messages received from supporters gave her the “strength” needed to keep going.

While Dominique Pelicot received the maximum sentence allowed in France for aggravated rape, others who visited the Pelicot home multiple times, like Romain V., and Charly A., recieved 15- and 13-year-old sentences respectively. Many of the other rapists received shorter sentences than prosecutors expected – including a few who walked free with suspended sentences.

Some gasped inside the courtroom as Jacques C, who was handed a 5-year suspended prison 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 close to the case said judges deliberately wanted to differentiate the sentences to show a difference between the seriousness of the crimes. The source told CNN that they also hoped that by handing down varying sentences, it will limit the number of appeals lodged.

Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro told reporters Thursday that his legal team is considering lodging an appeal, but has not yet made a decision, adding that she felt her client had been made the scapegoat of the trial.

But evidence shows how central Dominique was in orchestrating the crimes.

He recruited the men to rape his then wife on the now-defunct Coco.fr “dating site” for years, using the chatroom called “without her knowledge,” where he would exchange pictures of an unconscious Gisèle before moving 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 sedation and sexual abuse began to take a physical toll. Her husband accompanied her on several doctor’s visits during which she complained about memory loss and pelvic pain, according to court documents.

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

Whilst investigating the upskirting, police officers confiscated his hard drive, laptop and phones and found hundreds of images and videos of Gisèle being raped, opening one of the worst sex offense cases in modern French history.

Towards the beginning of the trial, Gisèle questioned her rapists, many of whom said they thought that a husband’s consent sufficed.

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

She said she would never forgive her former husband.

The trial has concluded. But its outcome has left many angry and disillusioned, including the children of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot. They say such sentencing fails to acknowledge the gravity of the rapists’ crimes and underscores France’s substandard approach to tackling sexualized violence.

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

Sarah McGrath, CEO of Women for Women France told CNN that France is “notorious for having really quite lax sentencing.”

“We have a really problematic justice system when it comes to trying cases of this nature. Women in France simply don’t trust the French justice system,” she said, pointing to the fact that only 10% of victims of rape even report the crime to the justice system. And of those reports, only 1 to 4 percent end up with a conviction.

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

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