Dominique Pelicot was given the maximum sentence, 20 years, on Thursday for raping his wife, Gisèle, after he admitted to drugging her and inviting other men to join him in violating her over nearly a decade.
The monthslong case has riveted and stunned France. It also transformed how the nation discusses sexual violence and turned Ms. Pelicot, who has since divorced her husband, into a feminist hero for pushing to make the trial public.
The 50 other defendants were all found guilty, most of them of raping Ms. Pelicot. The head judge, Roger Arata, read out the guilty verdicts, one after the other, to a packed courtroom in Avignon, in southern France.
Here’s what to know about the trial.
What is the case about?
Dominique Pelicot, 72, is a retired real estate agent and salesman who until his arrest lived in Mazan, a city in southeastern France with a population of 6,300.
In 2020, police began investigating Mr. Pelicot after three women reported him trying to film up their skirts in a supermarket. During the investigation, they found many thousands of photographs and videos of rapes and sexual abuse on his computer and other electronic devices.
Many of the videos and photos showed Ms. Pelicot unconscious, being sexually penetrated by dozens of men. A couple of pictures showed their daughter Caroline sleeping. She said she does not own the lingerie she was wearing in the pictures, and that she never sleeps in that position. The couple’s daughter-in-law and former daughter-in-law also appeared on a handful of pictures taken without their knowledge while undressing in the bathroom. The three women were also plaintiffs in the trial, and Mr. Pelicot was additionally convicted of taking and distributing their photographs.
The police charged Mr. Pelicot in November 2020 and spent almost two years identifying and charging the other men involved in the rapes.
In court, most of the men accused said that they had met Mr. Pelicot on a website implicated in more than 23,000 police cases in France from 2021 to 2024. The chat site has since been shut down by the French authorities.
What were the various sentences?
Most of the other defendants received sentences of eight to 10 years, less than the 10- to 18-year terms that the public prosecutor had recommended. Jean-Pierre Maréchal, who pleaded guilty to following Mr. Pelicot’s model and drugging his own wife to rape her, was sentenced to 12 years; the prosecutor had recommended 17.
Who is Gisèle Pelicot?
For years, Ms. Pelicot had been losing hair and weight. She had started forgetting whole days, and sometimes appeared to be in dreamlike trances. Her children and friends worried she had Alzheimer’s or a brain tumor.
But in late 2020, after she was summoned to a police station in southern France, she learned a shattering story: Her husband of 50 years had secretly been drugging her into a deep sleep, the police said, and then raping her along with dozens of men he had invited into the couple’s home, in abuse that lasted nearly a decade.
Ms. Pelicot, who has divorced her husband but used her former married name during the trial, is now 72. Feminist activists and writers have lauded her courage, strength, and dignity in confronting her horrifying experience. They have also praised her rare decision to fling open the court’s doors onto her intimate hell and insist that the trial be made public, when it could have stayed private.
She also insisted that the grim videos her husband took of those encounters be played publicly as irrefutable proof. She stayed in the courtroom while the videos were shown, revealing the men, sitting on benches nearby, touching her inert body and engaging in sexual acts, while her husband encouraged them.
“It was difficult for me to make the decision to broadcast these videos, but it was also a way of finding out the truth,” she told the court in October. One of her lawyers, Antoine Camus, said the country needed “to look rape straight in the eyes.”
How has the case changed France?
The trial has sent shock waves through France, prompting debates about the legal definition of rape, the notion of consent, and drugging someone against their will — called “chemical submission” in France.
News from the Avignon courthouse has appeared in national and international media constantly since September, with more than 180 news organizations signed up to attend. Domestically, feminists and politicians alike have used the trial to speak out against violence against women and the prevalence of rape culture.
The case has also widened perceptions of who might commit sexual crimes. “Sexual offenders are often imagined as being dysfunctional misfits, when, in reality, they are Mr. Everyman,” said Audrey Darsonville, a professor of criminal law at the University of Nanterre and an expert on rape. “That’s what this trial reminds us.”
Who judged the trial?
The trial took place before five professional judges.
Following a law passed in 2019, regional criminal courts adjudicate the trials of crimes that are punishable by 15 to 20 years, such as rape or robbery. To speed up the proceedings, these courts use only magistrates, not juries. In these criminal courts, all decisions, including verdicts, are taken by a simple majority vote.
Where are the photographs of the accused?
The court prohibited any photographs of victims or of accused people in the courthouse without their written consent. Through their lawyers, Ms. Pelicot and her children have given their consent, which is why they appear in photographs from court.
A “perp walk” for defendants is not customary in France, where it would be considered harmful to preserving the presumption of innocence of the accused. The French media have largely abstained from giving the last names of the men, apart from Mr. Pelicot, in keeping with French tradition.
During the trial, a group of lawyers said it would press charges over threats that some defendants and their families received after pictures showing some of their faces and a list of their names circulated on social media.
What happens after the trial?
The verdicts in the trial do not necessarily mean that it is the end of the case. Some of the accused intend to appeal no matter the verdict and the sentence. If they do so, a new trial would be held within a year, this time with three professional judges and a nine-person jury.
Dominique Pelicot is also being investigated in the rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in 1991 and in the attempted rape of a 19-year-old in 1999. He has admitted to the attempted rape but denies any involvement in the 1991 homicide. No trial date has been set.
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