Gisele Pelicot’s attackers are already strolling FREE and dwelling peculiar lives simply weeks after they have been discovered responsible of intercourse assault alongside her wicked husband

Multiple men who were convicted of sexually abusing Gisele Pelicot have already walked free from prison and are now living relatively normal lives. 

The months-long trial – which has gone down in history as  France‘s most notorious sexual abuse case – concluded in December last year. 

Dominique Pelicot, 72, who has come to be known as the Monster of Avignon, drugged, raped and organised the repeated rape and sexual abuse of his now-ex-wife Gisele by dozens of other men.

He and 50 other men were found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting 72-year-old Gisele at the behest of her husband Dominique over the course of a decade.

In all, the court found 47 of the defendants guilty of rape, two guilty of attempted rape and two guilty of sexual assault. The 51 men faced a combined sentence of 600 years.

However, at least six of the convicted men walked free in December due to poor health or because they had already served their sentence in pre-trial detention.

Many of those who are out of prison have picked up their lives where they left them before the trial. 

The Sunday Times reported that in one case a convicted man was welcomed back into his family home is now back at his place of work. 

Gisele Pelicot has been praised after she waived anonymity and instead stoically attended the trial for three months and looked defiantly at each of the defendants as they were convicted of her rape and other crimes

A  mural reading ‘Justice for Gisele, Justice for all’ near the Avignon courthouse

Dominique Pelicot is seen arriving at court in the back of a police car earlier this week

According to the French parole system prisoners can apply for early release if they have served half of their sentence, or in some cases a third, and the rules are especially flexible if the prisoner is over 70, has demonstrated good behaviour or has a property they can return to.

In one instance a man served only 11 months of his five-year sentence for aggravated rape, according to information provided in court papers seen by the Sunday Times.

Meanwhile, several other abusers escaped justice, with police unable to identify more than 20 men involved.

Gisele has been praised after she waived anonymity and instead stoically attended the trial for three months and  looked defiantly at each of the defendants as they were convicted of her rape and other crimes.

When she spoke for the first time at the trial, Gisele became symbolic of the impact many rape survivors hoped the trial would have when she said: ‘Shame must change sides.’ 

As interest in the case grew, Gisele was clapped and cheered as she arrived at court and left at the end of the day. Graffiti honouring her bravery was daubed on Avignon’s medieval stone walls and protests in support of her erupted all over France – with many seeing the case as a watershed moment for the country. 

Despite this, many of the men convicted of the heinous crimes appear to feel no shame with 17 launching appeals against their sentences. 

Patrick Gontard, who represented Jean-Pierre Maréchal – the second most prominent defendant in the trial – said: ‘Certainly, there were others who didn’t feel it was right that they were sentenced. 

This court-sketch depicts Gisele Pelicot during the hearing of the verdicts

Gisele looked at each of the defendants as their verdicts were read out. This court sketch depicts Gisele looking at her husband

‘They argue they were tricked by Pelicot. A lot of people convince themselves that what they did wasn’t so bad. It’s human.’ 

Gisele’s husband, received the largest sentence of 20 years  for raping and organising the mass rape of Gisele. 

Judges have also found him guilty of recording and illegally broadcasting images of his wife and of recording images of three other women. Police found some 20,000 lurid images and videos of Pelicot’s wife being abused in files on his computer, as well as pictures of his daughter and his two daughters-in-law naked. 

The 72-year-old has failing health, and his daughter Caroline Darian yelled at him as his sentence was delivered: ‘You will die alone like a dog in jail!’ She has directed the phrase at her cowering father throughout the trial.

Hunched over in his chair, the Monster of Avignon sobbed as his verdict – the longest of all the defendants – was read out. 

Speaking outside court after the sentences were handed down, Pelicot’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro said her client was ‘stunned’ at the judges’ decision to hand him the maximum sentence, as well as the suggestion that he could be kept in longer if he was still considered a security threat.

Chaos erupted outside the courtroom with a large group of baying protesters gathered outside shouting ‘shame on you’ as the defendants emerged, hiding their faces behind masks and under hoods.

Meanwhile, the lawyer for one defendant who was found guilty of sexual assault but walks free having already spent the length of his sentence behind bars was filmed laughing at the protesters, labelling them ‘a bunch of hysterical knitters’ and taunting them by saying ‘my client has a message for you – the message is s***’.

He went on to say: ‘Your request for 20-year prison sentences for all the defendants has been refused… My client walks free, he says ‘Up yours!’

In an electrifying 90-minute testimony, Gisele told the hushed Avignon court: ‘I was sacrificed on the altar of vice.

‘My body might have been warm, but I was like a dead person. I was a dead woman, and these men take advantage of me, they defile me, they treat me like a bin bag.

‘They didn’t rape me with a gun or knife to their heads – they raped me in full consciousness. They treated me like a rag doll.

‘It is unbearable, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to get up [off the floor] again.’

In his final statement Pelicot admitted to the court that he was a sex addict but denied drugging his daughter Caroline and taking photographs of her semi-naked on a bed dressed in her mother’s lingerie.

Turning to his daughter, he said: ‘Caroline, I never did anything to you.’

But in a furious outburst Caroline Darian screamed: ‘You are lying!

‘You’re not telling half the truth, even about your ex-wife!

‘You will die alone like a dog and caught out in lies!’

However, under questioning from his lawyer, Pelicot accepted he would ‘die like a dog’ in jail for the crimes he had committed, but refused to give his beloved daughter the truth she needed.

A man holds a placard reading ‘Thank you for your courage Gisele Pelicot’ outside the Avignon courthouse

And while France’s worst husband knows he has seen his family for the last time, he is expected to appear in court again, as Pelicot faces further allegations of rape and murder after France’s cold case bureau in Nanterre linked him with at least six hitherto unsolved crimes.

Pelicot has admitted the rape of a young estate agent in the Paris suburb of Villeparisis in 1999 but denies being involved in the murder of another estate agent Sophie Narne in another suburb of the capital eight years earlier and other similar cases.

The Pelicot case in terms of number of defendants is not the largest sex crime case in French history – in that regard it is eclipsed by the child-sex rings that operated in the city of Angers in the early 2000s.

But the globally high-profile trial has meant that it is almost certainly the most notorious.