‘It’s an endurance race’: Eight new defendants to take stand as France mass rape trial resumes

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - This court sketch created on September 17, 2024, shows defendant Dominique Pelicot during his trial in which he is accused of drugging his wife so he and scores of strangers could rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France, at the courthouse of Avignon in Avignon. — AFP pic

AVIGNON (France), Nov 4 — The trial of a Frenchman who recruited dozens of strangers to rape his drugged wife at their home resumes today, with the cases of eight new defendants to be examined in court.

The case of Dominique Pelicot, 71, and 50 other co-defendants aged 26 to 74 years old has caused outrage and sparked protests since it opened on September 2 in the southern city of Avignon.

For refusing to be ashamed and demanding the trial be open to the public, his ex-wife Gisele Pelicot, also 71, has become a feminist heroine in France and abroad.

The court has already questioned 36 of the defendants, including Pelicot himself, and will after a week’s break today start examining eight more of the co-accused.

Antoine Camus, one of Gisele Pelicot’s lawyers, said the international attention had given his client the strength to carry on.

“It’s an endurance race, but she of course remains ready for the fight and determined to see it through, because she has also been uplifted by this wave of support in France and abroad,” he told AFP.

“She very often receives many accounts that uplift her and help her in this marathon, which she is completing not just for herself.”

The abuse was uncovered after police in 2020 arrested Dominique Pelicot for filming up women’s skirts in a local supermarket.

He has admitted to raping his then wife Gisele Pelicot and enlisting dozens to join him between 2011 and 2020, meticulously documenting the abuse in thousands of images investigators found on his hard drives.

Driver, cleaner, HIV positive man

But his co-accused, most of whom risk up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape in convicted, have largely claimed they had no idea it was rape.

They have said they thought they were taking part in the sex game of a libertine couple.

“It’s really tiring for Gisele Pelicot to almost systematically hear the same explanations from the accused,” Camus said. “That was victim of rape ‘by accident’, rape ‘by error of judgement’, or ‘reluctant’ rape.”

The next eight men to be cross-examined from today include a 36-year-old truck driver, a 31-year-old labourer, a 36-year-old cleaner and a 42-year-old restaurant manager.

Among them is a 50-year-old software technician who has been accused of planning to imitate Dominique Pelicot’s methods on his own wife.

An HIV-positive single man, now aged 63, has been charged with visiting the Pelicot home in the southern town of Mazan six times to abuse Gisele Pelicot, not once using a condom.

The court will also examine the case of a 30-year-old who is the only co-defendant being tried in absentia.

‘Abused his own daughter’

Finally, an unemployed 41-year-old has been accused of raping Gisele Pelicot in 2019, with the complicity of her then husband, at the home of the couple’s daughter in the Paris region.

He denied committing rape of the first day of the trial.

The couple’s two sons and daughter, who goes by her pen name Caroline Darian, have regularly appeared at the trial to support their mother.

But Darian was not present at some of the more recent hearings.

In late October, after the trial reached half-mark, she announced on Instagram that she was checking in to a clinic for a few days to recharge and “to be able to sleep again”.

Darian, who in 2022 wrote a book “Et j’ai cesse de t’appeler papa” (”And I stopped calling you dad”), has campaigned for awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

She left the courtroom in tears early during the trial as the presiding judge recounted how her father also had naked photomontages of her on his computer.

“I too am a victim of Dominique P,” Darian wrote on Instagram.

“He drugged me without my knowledge, and without a doubt abused his own and only daughter.”

The trial is to last until December 20. — AFP