Five unanswered questions from the trial | Global News Avenue

French rape survivor Giselle Pellicot walked out of a court in southern France for the last time on Thursday after her ex-husband was jailed for 20 years for drugging and raping her and inviting several guests over nearly a decade. Ten strangers also abused her.

Dominique Pelicot, 72, was found guilty of all charges by a judge in Avignon. He went on trial along with 50 other men, all of whom were found guilty of at least one count, although they received shorter sentences than prosecutors had sought.

Although the trial is over, questions remain about the Pellicott case and what happens next.

When she first climbed the steps of the Avignon courthouse in September, no one knew Giselle Pellicot’s name. Over the next 15 weeks, her reputation grew as a rape victim who refused to be ashamed of what had happened to her.

as she left court ThursdayHundreds of people chanted her name and her picture graced the front pages of newspapers around the world.

She is now perhaps one of the most famous women in France. This means that, despite changing her name, she cannot return to anonymity as she tries to rebuild her life after her husband’s crimes were revealed.

Gisele is not the first person to become an icon because of unimaginable suffering. At great personal cost, she became a symbol of a fight she never chose. It seems unlikely, then, that she would have become an outspoken activist against gender-based violence, or a prominent feminist. Instead, she may return to the places she says have always given her comfort: music, long walks and chocolate — and her seven grandchildren.

“At the beginning of the trial, she said, ‘If I can last two weeks, that’s a lot.’ Ultimately, she lasted three and a half months,” said her attorney, Stephane Babonneau. “Now, she’s calm and relieved it’s over.”

Days after Dominic Pellicott’s crimes came to light, his daughter Caroline Darien was summoned to the police station and shown pictures of an apparently unconscious woman wearing unfamiliar underwear. Later, she said her life “came to a halt” when she realized she was looking at a photo of herself.

Her father has always denied touching her, but Caroline – whose pain and devastation was evident during many court proceedings – said she would never believe him and accused him of looking at her “with incestuous eyes” .

But amid a lack of evidence to prove she was convinced she had been abused, Caroline said she was the “forgotten victim” of the trial. This notion clearly seeped into her relationship with her mother. In a memoir published after her father’s arrest, she accused Gisele of not providing her with enough support, implicitly choosing to side with her rapist ex-husband over her daughter.

Although Gisele and her children always sat next to each other in court, often huddled together and whispering, there were signs the trial had taken a toll on their relationship.

On Friday, Caroline’s brother David stressed – as he has done before – that the trial was not just about Gisele but their entire “destroyed family”.

“We kids feel forgotten,” he said. “Honestly, I feel like while our attorneys did a great job defending our mother, we got a little less attention.”

In her memoir, Caroline lamented that Gisele “used denial as a coping mechanism.”

“Because of my father,” she wrote, “I have now lost my mother.”

All of the defendants, except Dominick, received shorter sentences than prosecutors sought.

Several defense attorneys were apparently satisfied, meaning they are unlikely to encourage their clients to appeal the verdict. A man named Jean-Pierre Maréchal was sentenced to 12 years in prison, five years less than prosecutors requested, his lawyer Patrick Gontard told BBC, it was “impossible” for him to appeal.

The months or years these men spend in pretrial detention will count toward their overall sentences, meaning some may soon be released if they serve their minimum sentences.

A man facing 17 years in prison was eventually sentenced to eight years in prison, with his lawyer Roland Marmillot telling the BBC that as he had already spent several years behind bars he was likely to be released soon. release.

Still, by the morning after the trial, two men who were each jailed for eight years had lodged appeals. Further cases are expected over the next ten days – during which appeals can be lodged.

Dominique Pelicot admitted assaulting and attempting to rape a 23-year-old real estate agent who went by the alias Marion in a Paris suburb in 1999. Someone put a piece of ether-soaked cloth over her mouth, but she managed to fight off her attacker. And he ran away. It wasn’t until 2021, after Pellicott was arrested for the crimes he committed against his wife Gisele, that he confessed when his DNA was cross-matched to a drop of blood found on Marion’s shoe. offense.

However, he denied any responsibility for another unsolved case – the 1991 rape and murder of another young estate agent, Sophie Narme, for which no DNA was found. Investigators believe there are too many similarities between the two cases to be a coincidence.

Other cold cases using similar modus operandi are also being re-examined.

“There will be a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ in the Pellico trial,” one Parisian man told the BBC early in the trial.

For many, this sentiment has only grown over the past few months, during which intense media coverage of the Pellicott trial sparked countless discussions about rape, consent and gender-based violence.

Two Mazan residents, Nicholas and Mehdi, told the BBC: “What we need is tougher sentences.” They said they were “sickened” when they discovered one of the defendants was someone they played football with. disgust”.

“If the sentences were longer, they would at least think twice before doing something like this,” they said, adding that it was “grossly unfair” that some people could be released from prison in the coming months.

However, it is worth noting that the risk of a 20-year prison sentence for aggravated rape did not stop Dominique Pelicot from leaving his unconscious wife to be raped by a stranger he met online.

There have been calls to reform France’s rape legislation to include consent, but this has been stalled in the past and will require significant work in the currently divided French parliament.

Some believe schools have a responsibility to better teach new generations about sex, love and consent. Dominique Pellicott’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro said she believed “change will not come from the Ministry of Justice but from the Ministry of Education.”

Françoise, a resident of the area where Giselle and Dominique Pellicott once lived, told the BBC she believed a way had to be found to bridge what children were taught in school with what they could access online The gap between the types of materials obtained.

“Young people have so much access to sex on the Internet, and schools are very formal,” she said. “They should be more open and honest about matching and interpreting what the kids are seeing.”

These exchanges show that while it will take some time for any changes to become tangible, the conversation is now starting. It will continue until there are no more unanswered questions.