French prosecutors seek 20-year sentence for Dominique Pelicot over wife’s mass rape

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By Marc Leras

AVIGNON, France (Reuters) -French prosecutors asked for the maximum 20-year prison sentence for Dominique Pelicot, who organised the repeated mass rape of his then-wife by knocking her unconscious with drugs and inviting dozens of strangers to abuse her in the family home.

Pelicot, 71, has admitted the charges in a trial that attracted worldwide attention and turned into an examination of the pervasiveness of sexual violence in France and beyond. Fifty other men also stand trial for participating in the sex acts.

The prosecutors, who will over the next two days say what sentences they seek against the co-accused, rejected the arguments made by many of the men that they did not realise they were raping Gisele Pelicot or had not intended to do it.

Gisele Pelicot appeared motionless while the accused abused her in thousands of videos and pictures recorded by her then-husband and shown in court over the past weeks.

“The accused are trying to shirk responsibility by saying they thought Gisele Pelicot consented,” public prosecutor Laure Chabaud told the court on Monday.

“But it’s not possible, today, in 2024, to consider that,” Chabaud said, adding that video and pictures clearly showed Gisele Pelicot was unconscious and therefore unable to give her consent.

As for Dominique Pelicot, who admitted to raping his wife as well as organising her rape by others, “the maximum sentence is 20 years, which is a lot … but at the same time … too little in view of the seriousness of the acts that were committed and repeated,” Chabaud said.

The prosecutors also said they were seeking a 17-year sentence for Jean-Pierre Marechal, 63, who has admitted to working with Dominique Pelicot to drug his own wife Cilia and for both men to rape her, after the men met on a now-shuttered website.

The verdicts and sentences are expected around Dec. 20.

Gisele Pelicot, 71, could have demanded the trial be kept behind closed doors, but instead asked for it be held in public, saying she hoped it would help other women speak up and show that victims have nothing to be ashamed of.

The trial has triggered protest rallies in support of Gisele Pelicot, and spurred soul searching, including a debate on whether to update France’s rape law.

Unlike in some other European countries, French law makes no mention of a requirement that sex involve consent, and requires prosecutors to prove a perpetrator’s intent to rape using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise”.

Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told reporters it was not a surprise that prosecutors had sought the longest sentence possible.

(Reporting by Marc Leras; Writing by Ingrid Melander; Additional reporting by Makini Brice and Tassilo Hummel; Editing by Peter Graff)