Accused males confronted with abuse movies in French mass rape case

Warning: This story comprises distressing particulars from the beginning.

An abrupt silence swamped the courtroom in Avignon as three giant tv screens, positioned excessive on three partitions, flickered again to life. One may sense folks bracing themselves.

In a bleak trial about extraordinary allegations of medicine and rape, it was time to indicate extra of Dominique Pelicot’s fastidiously curated dwelling movies.

These movies, filmed by Pelicot and saved on a tough drive that he labelled “abuse”, doc assaults on his ex-wife, Gisèle, over the course of a decade.

Fifty males are accused of raping her after she was drugged and left unconscious within the couple’s mattress by her husband.

Now 72, Gisèle Pelicot has waived her anonymity so the total particulars of what she was subjected to could be revealed to the French public. Her attorneys fought to have movies of the crimes screened in court docket.

Though the choose had earlier mentioned folks “of a sensitive disposition” would be capable of depart, one in every of Gisèle Pelicot’s authorized group mentioned many had determined to “look the rape straight in the eye”.

Most of the males recruited by her ex-husband on the web insist they didn’t imagine what they have been doing was rape.

Dominique Pelicot sat behind a glass panel, slumped in his chair. His gray hair neatly reduce, his left hand raised to dam his view of the display screen.

Gisèle Pelicot sat on the other facet of the court docket, her head in opposition to the wall, her eyes sometimes closed. A clean, unreadable expression on her face.

On the display screen, in close to silence, a brief, pale man sporting solely blue underpants and black socks, might be seen approaching a mattress.

The digicam wobbled because it adopted him. Behind the person, a lady lay on her left facet, virtually bare, on a crumpled white sheet. After which, with out edits, with none blurring, the intercourse acts started.

At instances, later within the video, you could possibly clearly hear the lady loud night breathing.

In court docket, Dominique Pelicot appeared to position each palms over his ears. For years he had laced his spouse’s foods and drinks with an anti-anxiety drug, which made her unconscious and significantly affected her well being.

This and different movies, proven in court docket and on Gisèle Pelicot’s insistence to the general public watching from an overflow room close to by, lie on the coronary heart of the prosecution’s case.

Prosecutors argue that every one 50 males who accepted on-line invites from Pelicot to go to the household dwelling within the village of Mazan, close to Avignon, should have recognized his spouse was unconscious.

Due to this fact, they should have realised that she was not a consenting associate in some form of intercourse recreation through which she merely pretended to be asleep. Due to this fact, they should have supposed to rape her.

However a string of defence attorneys and their shoppers have now sought to problem that.

The person seen on display screen on this explicit video was a 43-year-old carpenter, named in court docket as Vincent C.

He stood now in entrance of the judges in a separate glass-walled space on the rear of the courtroom, along with his head bowed down, trying away from the display screen.

“Do you recognise the facts of aggravated rape that you are accused of?” requested lead choose Roger Arata – an affable determine with a big white moustache.

“No,” Vincent C replied.

His rationalization, delivered haltingly, amounted to a hazy assumption that, since Dominique Pelicot had informed him his spouse was a consenting associate in a intercourse recreation, he had not given the matter any extra thought.

At this level Gisèle Pelicot left the courtroom for a couple of minutes, saying “I can’t bear that man”.

Vincent C acknowledged the expertise was “weird,” and in contrast to something he had encountered with different {couples}. And but, he went on, “I didn’t say to myself: this isn’t going well… I don’t think [about much else] in those moments.”

However, having spoken to his mother and to lawyers, and watching the trial unfold, Vincent C said he had come to understand more about French law, the meaning of rape and the gravity of his actions.

“Now that I am being told how the events unfolded, yes, the acts I committed would amount to rape.”

“Are you aware that Gisèle Pelicot was a victim of your acts?” requested the choose.

“Yes.”

Pelicot has himself admitted all the fees in opposition to him.

Exterior the courtroom, a lawyer representing one other of the accused males distinguished between Pelicot and the others.

“Today it’s clear that Dominique Pelicot’s position is to try to dilute his responsibility by dragging down 50 other men. [Gisèle] is the victim. The question is whether the others were complicit in it or were tricked into participating,” mentioned Paul-Roger Gontard.

Whereas a few of the accused have admitted to rape, others have claimed to have spoken or interacted with Gisèle Pelicot within the bed room.

“So, there are grey zones in this trial,” Mr Gontard continued, pointing to the truth that the movies themselves had already been edited by Pelicot himself, which means that proof probably useful for the defence may have been reduce out.

“He selected what he wanted to keep. He selected the shots. But don’t let that fool you. Everyone says he’s very manipulative.

“Many [of the accused] thought it was a libertine project with the couple, only to discover it was actually a sinister and criminal scheme devised by the husband.

“The question today is when did they realise something was wrong? This realisation varies among [the accused]. The question often arises – why didn’t they leave? It’s not that simple to leave at that moment when faced with a clearly dominant personality in a situation where they are naked and recorded by a camera,” the lawyer added.

Ten minutes’ drive from the courthouse, in a small house in a suburb of Avignon, another of the accused, who has already testified in the trial, agreed to speak to the BBC on condition of anonymity. The man, a nurse by profession, portrayed himself as a victim of Dominique Pelicot.

“I was terrified… I was reduced to the state of an instrument. He was the one who told me: ‘do this.’ I said to myself, this man is not normal, he is a psychopath. It is an ambush, a trap. He is going to kill me in this house,” said the accused man.

He also claimed that Gisèle Pelicot had “reacted to simple caresses… she scratches herself with a co-ordinated movement”, which he said led him to believe that she was conscious and merely pretending to sleep.

When I challenged him, suggesting he was simply seeking to present himself as a victim to avoid culpability, he insisted that was not the case.

He lashed out, repeatedly, at the way the trial was being conducted, at alleged “pseudo-feminists”, and the “hysteria” the media had generated.

Speaking forcefully, but occasionally sobbing, he maintained he was not a rapist. However, he acknowledged that “I will never be considered innocent in this case. I will always carry my guilt with me. I know that.”

The trial in Avignon is set to continue for many more weeks, with a verdict due shortly before Christmas.

Only half of the accused have so far been called to testify, but already this case has revealed, in the grimiest detail, the horrors to which Gisèle Pelicot was subjected, and her extraordinary courage in declining her right to privacy.

The case has also highlighted longstanding debates about French laws and attitudes surrounding rape, and the extent to which a woman’s consent is, or should be considered, a factor in court.

Many of the men have admitted wrongdoing and, like Vincent C, even apologised to Gisèle Pelicot in the courtroom, but they have also insisted that since they didn’t intend to rape, they should not be found guilty of it.

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