Here’s what you need to know about the mass rape trial

Judges in the French city of Avignon have found Dominique Pelicot guilty of aggravated rape in a mass rape trial that has turned a 72-year-old woman into a feminist icon.

Verdicts are being passed on the other fifty men who were also charged.

For almost a decade, Gisèle Pelicot was drugged by her ex-husband Dominique, who has admitted raping her and inviting dozens of men he had recruited online to have sex with her in bed at home while she was unconscious and unconscious

It was her decision to waive her anonymity and throw this trial into the open, in her words, causing “the shame to shift sides” from the victim to the rapist.

Although Dominique Pelicot admits the charges against him, most of the other men on trial deny that what they did was rape.

Dominique has also been found guilty of attempted aggravated rape against another man’s wife.

Prosecutors have asked for prison terms ranging from four to 20 years, the maximum sentence for a charge of aggravated rape.

One of the accused, who has admitted the charges, has assured that the trial was rushed and “sick”.

Activists say this case demonstrates the need to incorporate consent into rape laws in France, as in other European countries.

From 2011 to 2020, Dominique Pelicot brought his wife tranquilizers and sleeping pills without her knowledge, ground them into powder and added them to her food and drink.

Gisèle Pelicot suffered memory loss and blackouts due to drugs and has spoken about the 10 years of her life that have been lost.

He was eventually caught because a security guard reported him to the police for taking pictures up women’s skirts in a supermarket.

“I thought we were a close couple,” he once told the court. Instead, her husband was going to a notorious but now banned website called Coco.fr to invite local men to her home to have sex with her while she was in a coma.

“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” Gisèle Pelicot said at the start of the trial.

Since early September, Judge Roger Arata and his four colleagues have heard how 50 men, now aged between 27 and 74, visited the Pelicot home in the town of Mazan.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted all the charges against him: drugging and raping his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her. Prosecutors want judges to impose the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for aggravated rape.

“I am a rapist,” he told the judges. “I recognize all the facts (of the case) in their entirety.” He has apologized to his ex-wife and three children, but his actions have torn the Pelicot family apart.

The other defendants come from all walks of life and most of them are from within a 50 km (30 mile) radius of the town of Mazan dels Pelicots. Being firefighters, security guards and truck drivers has earned them the moniker Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr. Everyman). Most also have children.

Fifty of the 51 are charged with aggravated rape and attempted rape.

Romain V, 63, faces up to 18 years in prison if convicted. He is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six different occasions while he knew she was HIV-positive. His lawyer says he could not have passed on the infection because he had years of treatment.

Another 10 men could face sentences of 15 to 17 years, and prosecutors are seeking prison terms of 10 to 14 years for 38 of the others.

Before the verdicts, one of the few men to admit rape told the BBC through his daughter that many people had made up their minds straight away: “There wasn’t enough time. It was a botched job for me.” .

The average prison sentence for rape in France is 11.1 years, according to the French justice ministry.

A man is charged with aggravated sexual assault instead of rape. Prosecutors say Joseph C, a 69-year-old retired sports coach and grandfather, should face the lesser sentence of four years in prison.

Some of them have apologized for their behavior, but many have not.

Cyril B said he feels sorry for Gisèle Pelicot.

“I’m ashamed of myself, I’m disgusted,” Jean-Pierre M said this week. His lawyer hoped the judges would take his contrition into account.

Not only has this case been held in the public eye, but the evidence against all the defendants was videotaped by Dominique Pelicot at the time and later presented in court.

Gisèle Pelicot, who has divorced her husband, said the men “treated me like a rag doll”. “Don’t talk to me about sex scenes. They’re rape scenes,” he said.

Therefore, none of the accused have been able to challenge the allegation that they were in Gisèle Pelicot’s room while she was in a coma.

His defense has been based on the definition of rape, because it currently involves any type of sexual penetration “by violence, coercion, threat or surprise”. This means that prosecutors must prove intent to violate.

Prosecutor Laure Chabaud told the court that no one could say more than “because she didn’t say anything, she gave her consent, that belongs to a bygone era.”

Thousands of people have joined the protests in support of Gisèle Pelicot in France. And the women have stood outside court every day chanting one of the lines their lawyers used to say in court: “Shame is switching sides.”

Gisèle Pelicot has attended practically every day of the trial, appearing in court wearing sunglasses shortly before nine o’clock.

Her decision to give up her anonymity is very unusual, but she has remained steadfast throughout. “I want every woman who has been raped to say: Mrs. Pelicot did it, so can I.”

But she has been clear that behind her facade of strength “is a field of ruins” and despite widespread acclaim for what she has done, she is a reluctant hero.

“She keeps saying, ‘I’m normal’, she doesn’t want to be seen as an icon,” her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau told the BBC’s Emma Barnett.

“Women generally have a strength they can’t even imagine and they have to trust themselves. That’s her message.”

Lawyers for the 51 defendants have highlighted the normal lives they led, although court-appointed psychiatrist Laurent Layet said they were neither ordinary nor “monsters”.

In the first weeks of the trial, the mayor of the village of Mazan told the BBC that the case could have been much more serious as no one died.

But those comments sparked an outcry across France and the mayor quickly apologised. He has since said he is retiring from public life.

The fact that the trial was held in public meant that all sessions were reported extensively and in detail.

Elsa Labouret, from the activist group Dare to be Feminist, told the BBC: “(Gisèle Pelicot) decided to make it bigger than herself. To make it about the way we deal with sexual violence as a society “.