French prosecutors have sought a 20-year prison sentence for Dominique Pelicot, accused of drugging his ex-wife Gisèle for 10 years and inviting 50 men recruited online to rape her.
Mr. Pelicot, who has admitted to the charges, will also have to undergo medical treatment for 10 years, prosecutors said.
Twenty years – the maximum penalty for rape under French law – “is both a lot… and too little considering the seriousness of the acts committed and repeated,” prosecutor Laure Chabaud said.
Referring to an assessment of Mr. Pelicot made by a psychiatrist earlier in the trial, Ms. Chabaud said the defendant showed “multiple sexual abnormalities.”
Verdicts and sentences are expected next month.
“He sought pleasure through a desire to subdue, humiliate and humiliate his wife – the person he claimed to cherish most in the world,” Ms Chabaud told the court, saying Mr Pelicot, 72, the end needs to be re-examined. of his sentence before being released.
Another prosecutor, Jean-François Mayet, said the trial has shaken society and that what is at stake is “not a conviction or acquittal” but “fundamentally changing relations between men and women.”
Mayet paid tribute to the “courage and dignity” of Gisèle Pelicot, who was present in the courtroom as she has been most days since the trial began in September.
Her decision to forego anonymity and initiate an open trial has sparked widespread interest in the case, which in turn has sparked a national conversation about rape culture, consent and chemical submission – drugging someone for the purpose of coercion or sexual assault.
By Monday morning, posters reading “20 years for everyone” had appeared on the walls around the Avignon courthouse where the trial is taking place.
However, it is unlikely that the fifty suspects in this extraordinary case will receive such long sentences.
The longest prison sentence requested today by prosecutors — excluding the 20-year sentence against Mr. Pelicot — was for Jean-Pierre Marechal, a co-defendant who is not accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot but who has admitted of having drugged and raped his own. ex-wife on the advice and instructions of Mr. Pelicot.
He faces 17 years in prison.
Posters have appeared on the streets of Avignon saying “Rape is rape – 20 years for each” [Getty Images]
Prosecutors also sought 10 years for most of the other 19 defendants whose cases were examined today.
The majority of the fifty suspects deny the rape allegations, arguing that they cannot be guilty because they did not realize that Mrs. Pelicot was unconscious when invited to the family home by her husband, and therefore did not “know” that they were raping her. .
But prosecutor Ms. Chabaud said that “we can no longer maintain that in 2024 because she didn’t say anything, she agreed.”
She added that neither the circumstances nor Gisèle Pelicot’s behavior “could have led these men to believe that she consented to being subjected to these sexual acts in her lethargic state.”
Dominique Pelicot in court on November 25. [Getty Images]
In a speech to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, Prime Minister Michel Barnier said the process was a turning point for the country’s efforts to combat violence against women.
“I am confident that the Mazan process will be a before and after,” he said.
Mazan is the name of the village where the Pelicots lived and where Dominque Pelicot filmed the local men he contacted online.
The Prime Minister also announced a series of government measures to combat violence against women, including funding for pharmacies to distribute home drug testing kits under a pilot program to combat chemical submission.
Equality Minister Salima Saa said earlier on Monday that the government was “fully mobilised” and announced the expansion of a system that allows victims of sexual violence to file complaints at hospitals and not just police stations.
The system is currently used in 236 hospitals and will be expanded to 377 hospitals by the end of next year.
A new awareness campaign was also announced.
The process, which started at the beginning of September, is now in its final phase.
Lawyers for the fifty defendants will make their closing arguments over the next three weeks and a verdict is expected on December 20.
