They ask for 20 years in prison for Dominique Pelicot, for abuse by him and dozens of men against his wife

The French Prosecutor’s Office requested this Monday 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence in the country for the crime of rape, for Dominique Pelicot, for having abused his wife for 10 years, whom he drugged with sleeping pills and whom he offered to dozens of men to also sexually assault her.

The prosecutor of the Court of Appeal of Avignon Laure Chabaud requested that maximum sentence “with the greatest conviction”, and justified it by the psychology of Dominique Pelicot, whom she described as a perverse, egocentric, disturbed man, with multiple sexual deviations that he wanted to satisfy. their wishes without setting “any limits” and without the consent of the victim.

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“Twenty years is a long time. (…) No matter how old you are, it is not a little. It is both a lot and too little. Too little taking into account the seriousness of the acts committed and repeated,” said Chabaud.

Dominique Pelicot, who acknowledges the crimes charged, took thousands of photos and videos of the rapes, documents that have become key evidence for the accusation of the 51 men who sit in the dock, who despite everything in their Most deny having committed rape, arguing that they thought the victim agreed.

But prosecutor François Mayet wanted to make it clear from the first moment of his indictment that “Gisèle Pelicot was reduced to an object. Consent was not present before or during the act.”

The perversities of Dominique Pelicot

The Public Ministry also recalled that there are 20,000 visual documents recorded by the main accused that show the “extreme violence of the crimes.”

In a first reaction to the tax petition before the press, Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, Isabelle Zavarro, said she expected the maximum penalty would be requested, but expressed surprise at the motivations, specifically at the description made of her client..

“It seems to me that the Prosecutor’s Office has decided to distance itself a little from the personality of Dominique Pelicot, which in my opinion can explain some things,” he commented, implying that he intends to use some elements of his biography in his defense, such as the alleged abuses. which he says he himself suffered as a child and adolescent.

The Prosecutor’s Office, on the other hand, demanded a sentence of 17 years in prison for aggravated rape against Jean-Pierre Maréchal, the man who imitated Domninique Pelicot’s methods to drug his own partner with sleeping pills and rape.

Maréchal, who confessed to the facts and recognized himself as a “criminal rapist”, secretly administered sleeping pills to his wife between 2015 and 2020, approximately a dozen times, to sexually abuse her, along with Dominique Pelicot, who came to the home. of the couple.

The rapes stopped one day when Dominique Pelicot was at Maréchal’s house to rape his wife and the victim woke up.

The events that have been tried in Avignon since last September 2 took place between July 2011 and October 2020, first in the Paris region and later in the house to which the Pelicots had moved when they retired in the town of Mazan, near of Avignon.

Dominique Pelicot came into contact with other men on an online platform and invited them to his home, after administering large doses of anxiolytics to his victim, which left her unconscious, allowing them to abuse her without her retaining any memory.

It all ended in September 2020 when he was arrested for recording under the skirts of some women in a supermarket in Carpentras and when searching his computer files, investigators discovered thousands of videos and photos in which the rapes to which he subjected the victim appeared. .

The main accused is accused in two other cases of gender violence, one for the rape and murder of a woman in 1991 and the other for an attempted rape with a knife in 1999.

(Read also: Dominique Pelicot’s daughter revealed that her father kept hundreds of photos of her without clothes)