Convictions for 51 men in mass-rape trial that shocked France

On Thursday, judges in the French city of Avignon will sentence 51 people in the mass rape trial that turned a 72-year-old woman into a feminist icon.

For almost a decade, Giselle Pellicot was drugged by her ex-husband Dominique, who then invited dozens of men he recruited online to have sex with her in her bed at home while she was unconscious and unsuspecting.

It was her decision to give up her anonymity and bring this trial into the open – in her words, forcing a “reversal of shame” from victim to rapist.

Although he admits to the charges brought against him, most of the other defendants deny what they committed as rape.

Prosecutors had asked for a prison sentence of four to 20 years, the maximum penalty for aggravated rape.

One of the defendants, who admitted the charge, said the trial was rushed and “botched”.

Campaigners say the case proves the need to build consent into French rape laws, as in other European countries.

From 2011 to 2020, Dominic Pellico drugged his wife with sedatives and sleeping pills without her knowledge, ground them into a powder and added them to food and drinks.

Suffering from memory loss and drug-induced blackouts, Giselle Pellicot has opened up about the 10 years of her life that were wasted.

He was eventually caught because a security guard reported him to the police for taking pictures up women’s skirts in a supermarket.

“I thought we were a close couple,” she once said in court. Instead, her husband visited an infamous but now banned website called Coco.fr to invite local men to his home to have sex with her while she was in a coma.

“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” Giselle Pellicot said at the start of the trial.

Since early September, Judge Roger Arata and his four colleagues heard how 50 men, aged between 27 and 74, visited the Pellicotes’ home in the village of Mazan.

Dominic Pellico admitted to all the charges against him – drugging and raping his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her. Prosecutors are demanding that judges sentence him to the maximum 20-year prison term for aggravated rape.

“I am a rapist,” he told the judges. “I admit all the facts (of the case) in their entirety.” He apologized to his ex-wife and three children, but his actions tore the Pellicott family apart.

The rest of the accused come from different walks of life, and most of them are from a radius of 50 km (30 miles) from the village of Pelikotau Mazan. The fact that they are firefighters, security guards and truck drivers earned them the name Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr. Everyman). Most of them also have children.

50 of the 51 are charged with aggravated rape and attempted rape.

Romain V, 63, faces 18 years in prison if convicted. He is accused of raping Giselle Pellicot six times, knowing that he was HIV-infected. His lawyer says he could not have transmitted the infection because he had been receiving treatment for many years.

Another 10 people may be sentenced to 15-17 years, and for 38 others, the prosecutor’s office demands 10 to 14 years of imprisonment.

Ahead of the sentencing, one of the few men to confess to the rape told the BBC through his daughter that many people made a snap decision: “There wasn’t enough time. It was a bad job for me.”

According to the French Ministry of Justice, the average prison term for rape is 11.1 years.

One man is not charged with rape, but with aggravated sexual assault. Prosecutors say Joseph S., a 69-year-old retired athletic trainer and grandfather, faces the lightest possible sentence of four years in prison.

Some of them apologized for their behavior, but many did not.

Cyril B said he felt sorry for Giselle Pellico.

“I’m ashamed of myself, I’m disgusted,” Jean-Pierre M. said this week. The lawyer hopes that the judges will take into account his remorse.

Not only was this case conducted in full view of the public, but the evidence against all the accused was videotaped by Dominic Pellico at the time and later played in court.

Giselle Pellicot, who divorced her husband, said the men “treated me like a rag doll.” “Don’t talk to me about the sex scenes. These are rape scenes,” she said.

Therefore, none of the defendants could dispute the allegation that they were in Giselle Pellicot’s room when she was in a coma.

Their defense relied on the definition of rape as it now includes any type of sexual penetration by “force, coercion, threat or surprise”. This means that the prosecution must prove intent to commit rape.

Prosecutor Laure Chabot told the court that no one can now say that “because she didn’t say anything, she gave her consent – that’s a thing of the past”.

In France, thousands of people took part in protests in support of Giselle Pellicot. And the women stood outside the court every day and chanted one of the phrases her lawyers said in court: “Shame is changing sides.”

Giselle Pellicot attended almost every day of the trial, appearing in court wearing sunglasses only until nine o’clock.

Her decision to give up her anonymity is highly unusual, but she held firm every moment. “I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pellicot did it, I can do it too.”

But she was clear that behind her facade of strength “lies a field of ruins” and despite the widespread recognition of what she has done, she is a reluctant hero.

“She keeps saying, ‘I’m normal’, she doesn’t want to be seen as an icon,” her lawyer, Stefan Babono, told the BBC’s Emma Barnett.

“Women tend to have a strength within them that they can’t even imagine, and that they have to trust themselves. This is her message.”

Lawyers for the 51 defendants emphasized the normal lives they led, although court-appointed psychiatrist Laurent Laye testified that they were neither normal nor “monsters.”

In the first weeks of the trial, Mazan, the then head of the village, told the BBC that the case could have been much more serious because no one had died.

But the remarks caused an outcry across France, and the mayor quickly apologised. After that, he announced that he was leaving public life.

The fact that the trial was open meant that each hearing was reported at length and in detail.

Elsa Labouret, of the activist group Dare to be Feminist, told the BBC: “(Giselle Pellicot) decided to make it bigger than herself. To make it about how we as a society deal with sexual violence.”