While Gisèle Pelicot, 71, had the right to request that the trial take place behind closed doors, she decided to make it public. She said that she did it not for her, but to protect other women. Shame, she said, must change sides — from the victims to the perpetrators.
People gather at Place de la Republique in Paris to support Gisele Pelicot.Credit: AP
The accused men appear to be a gallery of working-class and middle-class French society: truck drivers, carpenters and trade workers, a nurse, an information technology expert, a local journalist. They range in age from 26 to 74. Many have children and are in relationships.
All but 15 have contested the charge. Many have argued that they were tricked into coming into her bedroom by Dominique Pelicot, who had offered them a playful trio with his wife. Many say he led them to believe she was sleeping — or pretending to sleep — as part of the couple’s sexual fantasy. Dominique Pelicot manipulated them when they were vulnerable, some of them have said.
One said this week that he thought he was also drugged, and had no memory from the moment he entered the room until he returned to his car later. Another said he was so terrified by Dominique Pelicot, whom he regarded as a “predator” and a “psychopath,” that he interacted with Gisèle Pelicot’s body calmly in order to “not show weakness, so he attacks me”.
“They took a precise line of defence,” Camus, one of the lawyers for Gisèle Pelicot, told the court Friday. Pelicot has said that while the men were perhaps tricked into coming into her bedroom, once they got there, she was so unconscious that it was clear that she could not have possibly given consent.
Gisele Pelicot leaves an earlier court hearing in Avignon with her sons, David (left), Florian (background) and her lawyer Stephane Babonneau (right).Credit: AP
This is where the videos come in. Dominique Pelicot filmed most of the encounters, often with two cameras, and carefully edited and titled them. Over the course of their investigation, police found more than 20,000 videos and photographs on his electronic devices, many of them in a digital folder titled “Abuse”.
After initially ruling the videos would not be viewed because of their “indecent and shocking” nature, the judges of the criminal court in Avignon changed their minds after a heated courtroom debate Friday. Not all the videos would be shown, announced the head judge, Roger Arata — just those videos deemed “strictly necessary” for the “manifestation of the truth.”
A dozen videos and about 10 photos were shown over the courtroom’s three flat screens Friday afternoon and projected into the overflow room for members of the public, who have continued to line up every day to watch the proceedings and support Gisèle Pelicot.
The videos’ titles alone, packed with crude words and read out by the prosecutor, made many observers flinch. Arata said at one point that he didn’t have any “particular desire” to read them out loud any more.
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In many, Pelicot appeared naked, but in some, she wore a garter belt, underwear and white socks. In one, she had a blindfold over her eyes. Her husband told police he often dressed her up after she was unconscious, and then at the end of the night, he cleaned her and returned her to her nightclothes.
The accused were seen stroking her sides and intimate parts with their hands and mouths. Five were captured putting their penises in her slack mouth. The camera sometimes zoomed in for close-ups. While Pelicot could be seen moving slightly in some, in none was she seen responding to the touches. She often snored loudly.
The videos played on uncomfortably long. One defendant lowered his face. Many lawyers and journalists stopped looking at the screens.
Thierry Postat, a 61-year-old refrigeration technician who is among those on trial, told the court that he had been involved in swinging and couple sharing since he was 30. He said that in at least three other cases, he had been invited into bedrooms by husbands to have sex with their sleeping wives — only one of whom woke up.
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“I trusted Mr. Pelicot,” because most of the time among swingers, Postat told the court, “it’s the man who organizes things”
But he was pressed by Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer, Camus: “You really thought you were practicing couple swapping? You see a couple there?” Camus asked Postat, referring to the video that had just been shown.
“Yes,” Postat responded. “The way I remember it.”
Another video captured Simone Mekenese penetrating Pelicot, while she was lying on her side sleeping.
“You weren’t aware she was unconscious?” asked Stéphane Babonneau, a second lawyer for Pelicot.
“No,” responded Mekenese, 43, a driver on a construction site who was a neighbour of the couple’s at the time. “I thought she would participate soon.”
An argument heard repeatedly in court this week was that while they might not have gotten direct consent from Pelicot, the accused men did not go to the Pelicots’ home with an intention to rape her.
The day before, Postat had told the court that they might be rapists because they had not received consent, “but we aren’t rapists in our souls.”
After two hours of viewing videos, the court session ended abruptly. People drifted out of the courtroom, and the overflow room, stunned.
“We are in shock,” said Anne-Marie Galvan, 58, a nursing assistant at the local hospital. Her husband, Serge Galvan, stood nearby, tears swelling in his eyes.
“I’m almost ashamed to be a man,” he said.
The couple, and the rest of the crowd, clapped thunderously when Pelicot passed by, making her way with her lawyers to the court exit. She stopped, looked at the group, and put her hand to her heart.
Support is available from the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service at 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732).
