2024-09-05 06:35:37
Since the opening of this trial three days ago, he has been patient, quiet, but very attentive. For the first time, Gisèle Pélicot will speak, this Thursday, September 4, before the Vaucluse criminal court. But especially in front of the 51 men who accused her of having raped her. For almost ten years, her husband, Dominique Pélicot, recruited many strangers on the Internet and gave them the opportunity to abuse his partner, after drugging her.
Even if there will be “extremely difficult times”, Gisèle Pélicot “believes that she does not have to hide”, that “she does not have to be ashamed”, explains Me Stéphane Babonneau, one of her two lawyers. The 72-year-old woman also refused to allow the trial behind closed doors so that “the shame changes sides”.
“We feel welcome behind us”
Since the trial opened on Monday, scheduled to last four months, the septuagenarian has listened to a lot of arguments. And the questions from some of the defense lawyers, addressed to the director of the investigation on Wednesday, clearly affected him.
The latter wondered about the independence of the couple or about the confidence of Gisèle Pélicot who knew nothing, for ten years, because of the sleeping pills that her husband administered to her.
After these accusations, the three children of Gisèle Pélicot were left the room for a while, wounded. Their mother stood alone. As if he didn’t want to miss a second of this test from which he expected answers.
Me Antoine Camus, his other lawyer, said on Wednesday, during a meeting pending: “It is clear that he is angry, we feel that he bowed behind us, saying: But I want to answer, I want to answer, but I have to answer. And we answered him: Tomorrow! »
Endless “sadness”.
Surrounded by his daughter, Caroline Darian (his pen name for the book published in 2022, “And I stopped calling you father”), and his two sons, Florian and David, Gisèle Pélicot will therefore speak for the first time . And give your version of an extraordinary file.
Asked on Wednesday, Jérémie Bosse Platière, director of the investigation into this case and now regional director of the Hautes-Alpes police, emphasized the “suffering” of the victim when he learned the facts, in the fall of 2020, by the police. Her husband was recently arrested for taking pictures under the clothes of three women in a shop in Carpentras. This tragedy “marked” the investigators, emphasized the divisional commissioner.
“He will experience rape for the first time, stop”
Victim for ten years of the actions of her husband, from July 2011 to October 2020, first when they lived in the Paris area, then mainly in their family home in Mazan, this small town in Vaucluse where they lived in March 2013, Gisèle Pélicot did not understand that she had been raped for years. Through her husband, from whom she is in the process of divorce since the revelation of the facts, and through complete strangers, who are now between 26 and 74 years old.
Of the 50 accusations filed by Dominique Pélicot, who is now 71 years old, to come and abuse his wife, between July 2011 and October 2020, ten have come back several times, up to six times for some. For a total of 200 rapes, according to the researchers’ estimate, including 92 by these men hired by the husband.
For Gisèle Pélicot, this trial will be “an absolutely terrible ordeal”, warned Me Camus, also the lawyer for the three children of the couple: she “will experience for the first time, the delay, the rapes she suffered for ten years ” , because he has “No memory of it”, he insisted to AFP.
#answer #Mazans #rape #trial #victim #speak #time