Gisèle Pelicot's rapist's sentence extended to 10 years after he appealed the verdict.
A jury found guilty of rape of the only one of the 51 defendants who appealed the first sentence, in which he was sentenced to 9 years.
ParisThe only one of the 51 convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot who appealed the initial sentence, a 44-year-old man, was found guilty of aggravated rape this Thursday and sentenced to 10 years in prison, one more than he had been sentenced to in the first-instance ruling. For four days, the rapist presented himself as a victim and denied raping Pelicot, the same strategy used in the initial trial. He neither convinced the court then nor the jury that tried him this time.
The appeal of the sentence by only one of the convicted men has meant that the victim—the 72-year-old French wife who was drugged by her husband so that more than 100 men would abuse her—has had to go through a trial again, in which she was seen again, with her in the courtroom, under the influence of a powerful drug that left her completely asleep.
During the four-day trial in Nimes, the man insisted on denying that he raped Pelicot because he claimed he thought she was attending a meeting with a libertine couple. However, the victim was unconscious and the rapist never asked her permission. The convicted man and the victim's ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, contacted each other through a sex dating website. It was the modus operandi Pelicot, who was sentenced in the first instance to the maximum sentence for this type of crime, 20 years, and is currently serving a sentence in solitary confinement in a French prison.
Audiovisual material
The man contacted all of Gisèle Pelicot's rapists through the same website. He invited them to his home to sexually abuse his wife, whom he drugged before the men arrived. He then recorded all the scenes on video and also took photos. The audiovisual material was key to the identification and conviction of the rapists. However, the police were only able to identify around fifty men.
"What we hope is that this jury will say loud and clear that, in this country, human rights also include women's rights, that it will say loud and clear that consent cannot be delegated," Gisèle Pelicot's lawyer had demanded this Thursday.
"You are guilty of having participated, like all the others, in the destruction of a woman whom your husband exposed and publicly denigrated," Dominique Sié, the attorney general, told him this Thursday. Sié had requested 12 years for the defendant, three years beyond the sentence he was sentenced to in the first instance. "This case is loaded with symbolism," said the advocate general, who referred to "universal male domination" and "rape culture."
On Wednesday, in the penultimate session of the trial, Gisèle Pelicot confronted her rapist, who had gone so far as to say that he was also a victim because Dominique Pelicot had cheated on him. "The only victim in this courtroom is me, not you. Take responsibility for your actions once and for all, I'm ashamed of you!" she retorted.
Gisèle Pelicot, who has become an icon of feminism and the fight against sexual violence, will publish a book with her first-person story in February.
