“It’s horrible what happened to that woman.”
It may be the annual Christmas market in Mazan’s central square, with life seemingly going on as normal, but a dark cloud has been looming over this small French town.
It was in Mazan where Dominique Pelicot, by his own admission in court, invited dozens of men he recruited online over to his home to rape his wife Gisèle Pelicot after he drugged her. Fifty-one in all are accused.
The trial in nearby Avignon adjourned on Monday ahead of verdicts expected later this week. Since the hearings began in early September, they’ve captivated the nation, even the world.
That’s in part due to the sordid details, but largely because Gisèle Pelicot, 71, waived her right to anonymity, putting a name and a face to a victim, a decision so rarely seen.
“We’re waiting impatiently for the sentences to come down,” said 52-year-old Yannick Richard from his kiosk. The retiree is selling knitted stuffed animals and sweaters at the market.
“We really have to mark the occasion. We can’t let it go by with little sentences.”
Gisèle Pelicot became an icon for those fighting against sexual violence for testifying about the harrowing events, in which she was rendered unconscious by her now ex-husband, who invited strangers into their home to rape her, between 2011 and 2020.
“When she took the decision to open the trial to the public, she did it because she felt that it was necessary for the public to understand what happened to her. She never did it because she wanted attention,” Pelicot’s lawyer Stéphane Babonneau said after the trial had adjourned.
In Mazan, though, few want to talk about the case. Most of the citizens in the town of about 6,000 are fed up, angry that their home has become synonymous with rape.
Those who do talk try to steer away from the details, instead highlighting the beauty of their village.
‘I find it appalling’
“As a Mazanaise, I don’t have too much of an opinion on the case. It’s very tragic what happened to that lady. As a woman, I find it appalling,” said 58-year-old singer Poline de Peretti, who has lived in the village for 18 years.
“The rapist of Mazan? No, no, no. It’s the story of Madame Pelicot and the family Pelicot. I would really like to invite you to visit our village. The people are charming.”
Still, de Peretti can’t help but give an opinion.
“It’s Madame Pelicot, but it could be Madame anybody. You or me. We don’t know.”
House of horrors
The first thing you’ll notice about the home at the centre of France’s worst-ever rape case are the blue shutters. Blue shutters on a cream-coloured bungalow with a terracotta roof.
An ordinary home where anything but ordinary went on inside.
There, just a 10-minute walk from the main square, is where Dominique Pelicot says he would invite the men to come and rape his wife, all the while filming it.
He has pleaded guilty, and in his testimony explained that he would tell the men to park at a nearby sports field parking lot, so as not to raise suspicion.
They would then walk, under the cover of darkness, the 100 metres or so to the home on a dead-end street.
“The notoriety of the village, a wonderful small village like this — it’s broken by this type of person, this type of attitude,” said Christian Lhermitte, who has lived in Mazan only the past five months.
“I think that justice will be served.”
His wife Hugues Lhermitte interrupts him.
“I don’t think the punishments will be severe enough, that’s certain.”
One after another all but one of the defendants went up to the microphone to speak on Monday. Dominique Pelicot, 72, was first. His voice was feeble and halting.
‘Hailing the courage of my ex-wife’
In his final statement to the court, he said he would “like to start by hailing the courage of my ex-wife,” and asked for forgiveness from his family.
Most of the other men simply said, “I have nothing to add.”
A few proclaimed their innocence — which received audibly scoffs from members of the public watching from the spillover room where the courtroom was on display via TV.
Walking out of the courtroom with Babonneau, Gisèle Pelicot received applause and stopped to speak to a few women who have been supporting her.
Babonneau said every society is struggling with questions around rape, adding that his client “really wanted for everyone to understand that there is no such thing as one rape, one type of rape, one type of rapist.”
“Everyone loved Dominique Pelicot for years. He was beloved father, beloved husband, grandfather, colleague, and still is probably one of the worst sexual criminals of the past 50 years in France,” he said.
Babonneau said the trial highlighted a universal message that consent is needed before a sexual act — and that French criminal law defines rape as an act of sexual penetration of someone using violence, coercion, threat, “or what we call surprise.”
He said while the word consent doesn’t appear in the law, Gisèle Pelicot was unconscious while being sexually assaulted, “so the rape was committed by surprise.”
Last month, prosecutors asked the panel of judges for the maximum possible penalty of 20 years in prison for aggravated rape against Dominique Pelicot and terms of 10 to 18 years against the other defendants facing the same charge, if found guilty.
The presiding judge told the court Monday that the verdicts are to be delivered on Thursday, but could be postponed to Friday morning.
Published at Mon, 16 Dec 2024 18:20:43 +0000
Judge rejects Trump’s attempt to throw out hush money conviction
A judge on Monday refused to throw out U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s hush money conviction dismissed because of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity. But the case’s overall future remains unclear.
Manhattan Judge Juan M. Merchan’s decision eliminates one potential off-ramp from the case ahead of the former and future president’s return to office next month. However, Trump’s lawyers have raised other arguments for dismissal. It’s unclear when — or whether — a sentencing date might be set.
Prosecutors have said there should be some accommodation for his upcoming presidency, but they insist the conviction should stand.
A jury convicted Trump in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 US hush money payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump denies wrongdoing.
The allegations involved a scheme to hide the payout to Daniels during the final days of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign to keep her from publicizing — and keep voters from hearing — her claim of a sexual encounter with the married then-businessman years earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them.
Supreme Court ruling after verdict
Weeks after the verdict, the Supreme Court ruled that ex-presidents can’t be prosecuted for official acts — things they did in the course of running the country — and that prosecutors can’t cite those actions to bolster a case centred on purely personal, unofficial conduct.
Trump’s lawyers then cited the Supreme Court opinion to argue that the hush money jury got some improper evidence, such as Trump’s presidential financial disclosure form, testimony from some White House aides and social media posts made while he was in office.
In Monday’s ruling, Merchan denied the bulk of Trump’s claims that some of prosecutors’ evidence related to official acts and implicated immunity protections.
The judge said that even if he found that some evidence related to official conduct, he’d still find that prosecutors’ decision to use “these acts as evidence of the decidedly personal acts of falsifying business records poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the executive branch.”
Even if prosecutors had erroneously introduced evidence that could be challenged under an immunity claim, Merchan continued, “such error was harmless in light of the overwhelming evidence of guilt.”
Prosecutors had said the evidence in question was only “a sliver” of their case.
Trump communications director Steven Cheung on Monday called Merchan’s decision a “direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision on immunity, and other longstanding jurisprudence.”
“This lawless case should have never been brought, and the Constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” Cheung said in a statement.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office, which prosecuted the case, declined to comment.
Merchan’s decision noted that part of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling declared that “not everything the president does is official.” Trump’s social media posts, for example, were personal, Merchan wrote.
Former U.S. president Donald Trump has been found guilty in his New York hush-money trial. CBC’s Anya Zoledziowski breaks down the key evidence and witnesses that led the jury to the historic conviction.
He also pointed to a prior federal court ruling that concluded the hush money payment and subsequent reimbursements pertained to Trump’s private life, not official duties.
Trump, 78, takes office on Jan. 20. He’s the first former president to be convicted of a felony and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.
Push to see conviction, case dismissed
Over the last six months, Trump’s lawyers have made numerous efforts to get the conviction and the overall case dismissed. After Trump won last month’s election, Merchan indefinitely postponed his sentencing — which had been scheduled for late November — so defence lawyers and prosecutors could suggest next steps.
Trump’s defence argued that anything other than immediate dismissal would undermine the transfer of power and cause unconstitutional “disruptions” to the presidency.
Meanwhile, prosecutors proposed several ways to preserve the historic conviction. Among the suggestions: freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029; agreeing that any future sentence won’t include jail time; or closing the case by noting he was convicted but that he wasn’t sentenced and his appeal wasn’t resolved because he took office.
The last idea is drawn from what some states do when a defendant dies after conviction but before sentencing.
Trump’s lawyers branded the concept “absurd” and took issue with the other suggestions, too.
Published at Tue, 17 Dec 2024 01:11:04 +0000
