AVIGNON, France (AP) — Gisèle Pelicot said after 51 men were all found guilty Thursday in the drugging-and-rape trial that turned her into a feminist hero that the ordeal had been “very difficult” and expressed support for other victims of sexual violence.
“We share the same fight,” she said in her first words after the court in the southern French city of Avignon handed down prison sentences ranging from three to 20 years in the shocking case that stunned France and spurred a national reckoning about the blight of rape culture.
Pelicot — whose courage and stoicism have turned her into an internationally recognized figure and an icon for many women — said she was thinking of her grandchildren after enduring more than three months of court hearings that dealt with the nearly decade of rapes and other abuse inflicted on her by her now ex-husband and his accomplices.
“It’s also for them that I led this fight," she said of her grandchildren.
The court sentenced her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, to 20 years in prison for drugging and raping her and allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious.
The sentence was the maximum possible under French law. He was declared guilty of all charges against him. At age 72, it could mean that he spends the rest of his life in prison. He won't be eligible to ask for early release until at least two-thirds of the sentence has been served.
Roger Arata, the lead judge of the court in the southern French city Avignon, told Pelicot to stand for the sentencing. After it was delivered, he sat back down and cried.
Arata read out verdicts one after the other against Pelicot and the 50 other men tried in the case.
“You are therefore declared guilty of aggravated rape on the person of Mme. Gisèle Pelicot,” the judge said as he worked his way through names on the long list of defendants.
Gisèle Pelicot was seated on one side of the courtroom, facing the defendants and sometimes nodding her head as verdicts were announced. Delivering the guilty verdicts and sentences took Arata just over an hour.
Dominique Pelicot's lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, said that she would weigh a possible appeal, but also expressed hope that Gisèle Pelicot would find solace in the court's rulings.
“I wanted Mrs. Pelicot to be able to emerge from these hearings in peace, and I think that the verdicts will contribute to this relief for Mrs. Pelicot," she said.
Of the 50 accused of rape, just one was acquitted but was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Another man was also found guilty on the sexual assault charge that he was tried for — meaning all 51 of the defendants were found guilty in one way or another.
In a side room where defendants' family members watched the proceedings on television screens, some burst into tears and gasped as the sentences were revealed.
Protesters gathered outside the courthouse followed the proceedings on their phones. Some read out the verdicts and applauded as they were announced inside. Some were carrying oranges as symbolic gifts for the defendants heading to prison.
Prosecutors had asked that Dominique Pelicot get the maximum penalty of 20 years and for sentences of 10 to 18 years for the others tried for rape.
But the court was more lenient than prosecutors had hoped, with many sentenced to less than a decade in prison.
For the defendants other than Dominique Pelicot, the sentences ranged from three to 15 years imprisonment, with some of the time suspended for some of them. Arata told six defendants they were now free, accounting for time already spent in detention while awaiting trial.
Dominique Pelicot admitted that for years he drugged his then wife of 50 years so that he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.
The appalling ordeal inflicted over nearly a decade on Gisèle Pelicot, now a 72-year-old grandmother, in what she thought was a loving marriage and her courage during the bruising trial have transformed the retired power company worker into a feminist hero of the nation.
Stretching over more than three months, the trial galvanized campaigners against sexual violence and spurred calls for tougher measures to stamp out rape culture.
The defendants were all accused of having taken part in Dominique Pelicot's sordid rape and abuse fantasies that were acted out in the couple's retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.
Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in food and drink that he gave his then wife, knocking her out so profoundly that he could do what he wanted to her for hours.
One of the men was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years imprisonment not for assaulting Gisèle Pelicot but for drugging and raping his own wife — with help and drugs from Dominique Pelicot, who was also found guilty of raping that man's wife, too.
The five judges voted by secret ballot in their rulings, with majority votes for the convictions and sentences.
Campaigners against sexual violence were hoping for exemplary prison terms and viewed the trial as a possible turning point in the fight against sexual violence and the use of drugs to subdue victims.
Gisèle Pelicot's courage in waiving her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual abuse and successfully pushing for the hearings and shocking evidence — including videos — to be heard in open court have fueled conversations both on a national level in France and among families, couples and groups of friends about how to better protect women and the role that men can play in pursuing that goal.
“Men are starting to talk to women — their girlfriends, mothers and friends — in ways they hadn’t before,” said Fanny Foures, 48, who joined other women from the feminist group Les Amazones in gluing messages of support for Gisèle Pelicot on walls around Avignon before the verdict.
“It was awkward at first, but now real dialogues are happening," she said.
“Some women are realizing, maybe for the first time, that their ex-husbands violated them, or that someone close to them committed abuse,” Foures added. “And men are starting to reckon with their own behavior or complicity — things they’ve ignored or failed to act on. It’s heavy, but it’s creating change.”
A large banner that campaigners hung on a city wall opposite the courthouse read, “MERCI GISELE” — thank you Gisèle.
Dominique Pelicot first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him surreptitiously filming up women’s skirts.
Police subsequently found his library of homemade images documenting years of abuse inflicted on his wife — more than 20,000 photos and videos in all, stored on computer drives and catalogued in folders marked “abuse,” “her rapists,” “night alone” and other titles.
The abundance of evidence led police to the other defendants. In the videos, investigators counted 72 different abusers, but weren't able to identify them all.
Although some of the accused — including Dominique Pelicot — acknowledged that they were guilty of rape, many didn't, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings sparked wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.
Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent covered his wife, too. Some sought to excuse their behavior by insisting that they hadn’t intended to rape anyone when they responded to the husband’s invitations to come to their home. Some laid blame at his door, saying he misled them into thinking they were taking part in consensual kink.
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Nicolas Vaux-Montagny contributed to this report from Lyon.
John Leicester, Tom Nouvian And Marine Lesprit, The Associated Press
