Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro speaks to the press as she leaves the courtroom in Avignon on December 19, 2024, after hearing the verdict in the trial of her client, with 50 others, accused of drugging his wife and orchestrating multiple rapes over nearly a decade.
| Photo Credit: AFP
A court in France on Thursday (December 19, 2024) sentenced Dominique Pelicot to 20 years of imprisonment for drugging and raping his wife and allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious, in abuse that lasted nearly a decade.
The sentence against Dominique Pelicot was the maximum possible under French law. He was declared guilty of all charges against him. At age 72, it could mean that he spends the rest of his life in prison.
Roger Arata, the lead judge of the court in the southern French city Avignon, told Pelicot to stand for the sentencing. After it was delivered, he sat back down and cried.
Arata read out verdicts one after the other against Pelicot and the 50 other men tried in the shocking case that stunned France and spurred a national reckoning about the blight of rape culture.
“You are therefore declared guilty of aggravated rape…,” the judge said as he worked his way through names on the list.
The survivor was seated on one side of the courtroom, facing the defendants and sometimes nodding her head as verdicts were announced. Delivering the guilty verdicts and sentences took Arata just over an hour.
Of the 50 accused of rape, just one was acquitted but was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Another man was also found guilty on the sexual assault charge that he was tried for — meaning all 51 of the defendants were found guilty in one way or another.
In a side room where family members of the defendants watched the proceedings on television screens, some burst into tears and gasped as the sentences were revealed.
Protesters gathered outside the courthouse followed the proceedings on their phones. Some read out the verdicts and applauded as they were announced inside. Some were carrying oranges as symbolic gifts for the defendants heading to prison.
Dominique Pelicot admitted that for years he drugged his then wife of 50 years so that he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.
The appalling ordeal inflicted over nearly a decade on the survivor, in what she thought was a loving marriage and her courage during the bruising trial have transformed the retired power company worker into a feminist hero of the nation.
Stretching over more than three months, the trial galvanized campaigners against sexual violence and spurred calls for tougher measures to stamp out rape culture.
Prosecutors had asked that Dominique Pelicot get the maximum penalty of 20 years and for sentences of 10 to 18 years for the others tried for rape.
But the court was mostly more lenient than prosecutors had hoped, with many sentenced to less than a decade in prison.
The defendants were all accused of having taken part in Dominique Pelicot’s sordid rape and abuse fantasies that were acted out in the couple’s retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.
Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in food and drink that he gave his then wife, knocking her out so profoundly that he could do what he wanted to her for hours.
One of the men was found guilty, not for assaulting the survivor in this case but for drugging and raping his own wife — with help and drugs from Dominique Pelicot, who was also found guilty of raping that man’s wife, too.
The five judges voted by secret ballot in their rulings, with majority votes for the convictions and sentences.
Campaigners against sexual violence were hoping for exemplary prison terms and view the trial as a possible turning point in the fight against rape culture and the use of drugs to subdue victims.
“Men are starting to talk to women — their girlfriends, mothers and friends — in ways they hadn’t before,” said Fanny Foures, 48, who joined other women from the feminist group Les Amazones in gluing messages of support for the survivor on walls around Avignon before the verdict.
“It was awkward at first, but now real dialogues are happening,” she said.
“Some women are realizing, maybe for the first time, that their ex-husbands violated them, or that someone close to them committed abuse,” Ms. Foures added. “And men are starting to reckon with their own behavior or complicity — things they’ve ignored or failed to act on. It’s heavy, but it’s creating change.”
Dominique Pelicot first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him surreptitiously filming up women’s skirts.
Police subsequently found his library of homemade images documenting years of abuse inflicted on his wife — more than 20,000 photos and videos in all, stored on computer drives and catalogued in folders marked “abuse,” “her rapists,” “night alone” and other titles.
The abundance of evidence led police to the other defendants. In the videos, investigators counted 72 different abusers, but weren’t able to identify them all.
Although some of the accused — including Dominique Pelicot — acknowledged that they were guilty of rape, many didn’t, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings sparked wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.
Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent covered his wife, too. Some sought to excuse their behaviour by insisting that they hadn’t intended to rape anyone when they responded to the husband’s invitations to come to their home. Some laid blame at his door, saying he misled them into thinking they were taking part in consensual kink.
Published – December 19, 2024 09:50 am IST