A monster of Avignon accomplice has said he doesn’t deserve a 14-year jail term for joining the mass rape of Gisele Pelicot because he is ‘weak and finds it hard to say no’.
The 46-year-old defendant, a manual labourer identified only as Jean-Luc L., pleaded for leniency on Tuesday, saying he doesn’t deserve the more-than-decade-long sentence demanded by the prosecution.
Jean-Luc L. is among the dozens of strangers that the main defendant, Dominique Pelicot, 72, admitted to having enlisted to rape his then-wife while she was drugged unconscious.
Prosecutors have called for a maximum 20-year jail term for Pelicot, who has been on trial in the southern city of Avignon since September with 50 other men for organising the repeated rape and sexual abuse of Gisele Pelicot, now 71.
They have also sought jail terms of between 10 and 18 years for 49 of the 50 co-defendants, with a four-year punishment requested in only one case.
Jean-Luc L.’s lawyer, Jordan Preynet, told the court that his client, who is accused of participating in two rape sessions at the Pelicot home, had not even done ‘one-tenth of what Dominique Pelicot did’ and should not be so harshly punished.
The lawyer also said Jean-Luc L. returned to the Pelicot house for a second session out of fear that Dominique Pelicot might use the footage he filmed during the first time if he did not show up, and also because ‘he is weak and finds it hard to say no’.
Jean-Luc L. stated shortly after his arrest that he was unaware that his actions amounted to rape, because he had been told by Dominique Pelicot what to do – an argument that lead prosecutor Laure Chabaud last week rejected as one of consent by proxy ‘from another era’.
Gisele Pelicot is pictured above walking next to journalists at the Avignon courthouse on November 27, 2024
This court sketch created at the Avignon courthouse, south-eastern France, on November 27, 2024, shows Beatrice Zavarro (right), lawyer of defendant Dominique Pelicot (centre), addressing the audience during the trial
Dominique Pelicot is accused of allowing multiple men to rape his wife while she was sedated
His lawyer said that he had also, early on, admitted to rape and asked for forgiveness from the victim.
The lawyer pointed to the absence of any prior conviction for his client, adding that he was receiving both psychological and psychiatric treatment.
‘You will pass judgment not just on a rapist in this case,’ the lawyer said.
‘You will pass judgment on the man that he was, and the man that he will be.’
Charlotte Bres, who represents another of the accused men – an IT worker identified only as Cedric G. – argued that her client, too, did not deserve the 16-year jail term recommended by the prosecution.
Cedric G. had admitted rape, she said, but felt that Dominique Pelicot should shoulder most of the blame, calling him ‘the conductor’ of the mass rapes.
It comes after Pelicot’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro kicked off the closing arguments in the mass rape trial, telling the court that Dominique had been a ‘good husband, father and grandfather’ according to all who knew him and that he turned to ‘perversity’ following his traumatic childhood, which the defendant claims included sexual abuse.
‘People aren’t born perverted, they become it,’ Zavarro said, repeating her client’s own words from his first courtroom questioning.
Zavarro started the closing arguments as the first of some 30 defence lawyers – scheduled to last until December 13.
‘Dominique Pelicot has accepted and admitted the harm of which he is accused,’ Zavarro said after addressing her ‘deep respect’ for Gisele Pelicot.
Gisele Pelicot talks during the trial of her husband with 50 co-accused at the courthouse in Avignon, France, November 19
A view shows the entrance sign to Mazan, the town where Frenchwoman Gisele Pelicot was the victim of an alleged mass rape orchestrated by her husband Dominique Pelicot at their home
The empty courtroom during a break in the trial of Dominique Pelicot, November 20, 2024
But Zavarro insisted that Dominique was not the ‘conductor’ many of the other defendants painted him as, some claiming they were under his domination or even themselves drugged.
‘What comes next is of course the sentence you will issue, perhaps distancing yourselves a little from the strongest requested by prosecutors,’ she told judges.
‘He has been hoping to apologise 1,000 times, I don’t know if you will listen to him, Madame, but he’s saying it again,’ Zavarro added to Gisele Pelicot.
‘Keep in mind the first Dominique, the one you cherished, hugged and loved deeply,’ she told Gisele and her children, who are co-plaintiffs in the case.
Dominique Pelicot’s decade-long abuse was only uncovered after he was arrested for filming up women’s skirts in public.
The probe led investigators to his meticulously kept records of the visitors to the family home in the town of Mazan.
Their trial has sent shockwaves through France and made his ex-wife Gisele Pelicot a feminist icon in the fight against sexual abuse for insisting that the hearings be held in public.
Closing arguments in the case are scheduled to run to December 13, with a verdict expected on December 20.