20 November 2024, France, Avignon: Sexual abuse victim Gisele Pelicot arrives at the Avignon courthouse for the trial of her former partner Dominique Pelicot, who is accused of drugging her for almost ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at her – Christophe Simon/AFP/dpa
MADRID 25 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The French Prosecutor’s Office has requested this Monday a 20-year prison sentence against Dominique Pelicot, the man accused of having drugged his wife for at least ten years so that dozens of individuals could rape her in his own home.
After eleven weeks of trial, prosecutors have presented their first arguments against the main defendant, although there are a total of 51 men charged. Thus, they have lamented that “Pelicot’s excesses are not directed solely at his wife” and have clarified that her figure is the “cornerstone” of the case.
That is why the attorney general, Laure Chabaud, has requested the maximum sentence against Pelicot – who was arrested on November 4 – for the “aggravated violations” perpetrated against his now ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, for a decade. “Twenty years is a lot, because twenty years living within the four walls of a prison is a lot, but at the same time it is nothing, it is too little given the seriousness of the acts committed, which were repeated,” said Chabaud.
“For this reason, I request with the greatest conviction a sentence of 20 years in prison,” he solemnly declared, according to information from the French newspaper ‘Le Figaro’. Prosecutors have found three main circumstances that constitute aggravating circumstances: the fact that the rapes were committed in a group, with the involvement of the spouse and under chemical submission.
Added to this are other crimes such as the distribution of sexual images of one of his daughters and two of his stepdaughters. The prosecutor has assured that Pelicot “knew what he was doing” and that his actions did not respond to “an impulse.” “He is accused of rape but also of other crimes related to this, in particular against his daughter and stepdaughters,” Chabaud stressed.
However, although Pelicot has admitted “to being a rapist like all those accused”, he has continued to deny the charges related to his daughter, a case for which the Prosecutor’s Office lacks sufficient evidence.
“We do not minimize her suffering, which is so legitimate, but we have not found a legal translation,” the prosecutor stated in relation to Caroline. However, he has defended that these events only demonstrate that there was “criminal behavior that lasted for decades.”