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A judge in France found on Thursday the ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted drugging and raping her repeatedly over nearly a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. He received the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Throughout the trial, Pelicot, who insisted that his full name be published and the court procedures are made public — has been praised for her courage and has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France and around the world.
Roger Arata, the chief judge at the court in Avignon, south-east France, read the verdicts of 49 other men who were also accused of raping Pelicot, at the invitation of her husband, and another accused of sexual assault aggravated All the men were found guilty, but one had his sentence reduced from rape to sexual assault. All of them received sentences of between three and 15 years, and two of the sentences were suspended.
“The children are disappointed by these low sentences,” one of Pelicot’s relatives, who asked not to be named, told the AFP news agency.
Pelicot was greeted when she arrived in court Thursday by crowds holding signs that read things like, “Thank you for your courage.” She and her daughters sat in the courtroom as the verdicts were read, leaning their heads against a wall, CBS News BBC News reported.
The trial began on September 2, and Pelicot was face to face with her almost every day former husbandDominique, or one of the other 50 men accused of assaulting her. She insisted that the videos submitted as evidence, taken by her ex-husband and showing men assaulting her while she appeared unconscious, be shown in court.
Dominique Pelicot was also found guilty of the attempted aggravated rape of a woman named Cillia, the wife of another man, Jean Pierre Marechal, who was one of the co-accused, as well as taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law, Celine and Aurore, BBC News reported. Sitting in court, he showed no emotion as the verdicts were read, according to the BBC.
The assaults took place between 2011 and 2020, when Dominique Pelicot was arrested. Police found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse on computer drives, which helped lead them to other suspects. Some of the men told the court they believed the unconscious woman agreed or that her husband’s permission was sufficient.
“It’s not up to us to feel shame, it’s up to them,” Pelicot said during the trial, referring to the attackers. “Above all, I am expressing my will and determination to change this society.”
Pelicot continued to attend hearings throughout the trial, in part, because “he felt that in some way he was representing the victims of this type of abuse,” his lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said before the sentencing that they were dictated on Thursday. “There are a lot of victims who go to trial, facing their attackers with no one outside, standing in line for them, offering flowers. So she felt she had to continue to focus, because she didn’t decide, but she he felt he represented the victims in some way and he felt responsible for that.”
Controversial French laws
Pelicot’s case sparked protests across France, with some protesters hoping the case could lead to changes in controversial French laws governing sexual consent.
France introduced the legal age of sexual consent in 2021 after public outcry over the rape of an 11-year-old schoolgirl by a man who was initially convicted of a lesser charge. Since then, sex with under-15s has been considered non-consensual, but French law does not refer to consent in cases involving older victims.
Under French law, rape is defined as penetration or oral sex with “violence, coercion, threat or surprise,” regardless of consent, according to the Reuters news agency. Prosecutors must therefore prove intent to violate if they want to succeed in court, legal experts told Reuters.
Only 14% of rape allegations in France lead to formal investigations, according to a study by the Institute of Public Policy.
“Why don’t we get convictions? The first reason is the law,” French legal expert Catherine Le Magueresse told Reuters. “The law is written in such a way that victims must meet the stereotype of a ‘good victim’ and a ‘true rape’: an unknown assailant, the use of violence and the victim’s resistance. But only is true for a minority of violations.”
“I’m trying to understand”
Speaking in court during the trial, Pelicot, who is 72, spoke of how she had thought she was in a loving marriage with her husband and would never have guessed what was going on.
“We would have a glass of white wine together. I never found anything strange in my potatoes,” Pelicot told the court. “We had just had lunch. Often, when there was a football game on TV, I would let him watch it alone. He brought the ice cream to my bed, where I was. My favorite flavor – raspberry – and I thought: ‘How lucky I am . I am, it’s a love.”
She said she didn’t feel like she was drugged.
“I never felt my heart beat. I didn’t feel anything. I must have collapsed very quickly. I would wake up in my pajamas,” Pelicot told the court, adding that she sometimes woke up “more tired than which is common.” , but I walked a lot and thought that was it
“I’m trying to understand,” she said, “how this husband, who was the perfect man, could have come to this.”
“Nothing will give him back the 15 years he lost, the 10 years he lived without knowing what was happening to him,” said Pelicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, before Thursday’s sentencing. “All he can hope for now is for justice to be served, and then, well, who could find comfort in someone going to prison for 10, 15 years, seeing another family destroyed. Nobody, and in fact, definitely not her.”
contributed to this report.
