**Live Updates: Dominique Pelicot and 50 Others Found Guilty in Landmark Rape Trial That Shook France**

 

Gisèle Pelicot speaks to reporters after a court sentenced her husband 20 years for serially raping her, in Avignon, France, on Thursday.Credit...

Avignon, France Dec. 19, 2:13 p.m.

Here are the latest developments. Dominique Pelicot, 72, who admitted to drugging his wife for almost a decade and inviting dozens of strangers he met on the internet to join him in violating her, was convicted on Thursday of aggravated rape and other charges and sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison. The verdict capped a trial that has horrified France, prompted profound discussions about rape culture and toxic masculinity, and turned Gisèle Pelicot, his wife of 50 years, into a feminist hero. Outside the packed courtroom in Avignon, France, Ms. Pelicot expressed “profound gratitude” for the support she has received from across France and beyond since the trial began in September, and said she had never regretted opening the trial to the public. The court also convicted the 50 other defendants, most of them on rape charges. In addition, Mr. Pelicot was found guilty of raping the wife of one of the men who was convicted, and of taking and distributing photos of Ms. Pelicot; their daughter, Caroline; and two daughters-in-law. The case has reverberated worldwide as its shocking details came to light. From the moment of his arrest in late 2020, Mr. Pelicot has admitted to crushing sleeping pills into his wife’s food and drink before he and other men raped her as she lay nearly comatose in their bedroom in the town of Mazan. He took thousands of video clips and photos of the encounters, which the police later used to identify and track down other perpetrators. Ms. Pelicot, 72, who has divorced her husband, waived anonymity to make the trial public, and her poise and courage have made her widely admired in France. Her face has appeared on nightly newscasts, the front pages of newspapers, graffitied walls and signs held up by protesters around the country. She has renounced her former surname but used it during the trial. Here is what else to know: Sentencing: Most of the other defendants received sentences of eight to 10 years, less than the 10- to 18-year terms that the public prosecutor had recommended. Jean-Pierre Maréchal, who pleaded guilty to following Mr. Pelicot’s model and drugging his own wife to rape her, was sentenced to 12 years; the prosecutor had recommended 17. Some of the men will go free because of time already served. Criminal code: The trial also set off a fierce debate over the definition of rape in the French criminal code, with some feminist lawmakers arguing that the law should be changed to say explicitly that sex without consent is rape. Notorious predator: Judges and lawyers in the trial have tried to grasp the enigma that is Mr. Pelicot. The court heard that he was an attentive grandfather, father and husband who had been besotted with Ms. Pelicot since they met at 19. But therapists testified to another side of him that was perverse, manipulative, incapable of empathy and addicted to sex, and that he said was rooted in a violent childhood. Other defendants: The French news media have labeled the 50 other defendants “Monsieur Tout-le-monde,” or Mr. Every Man, because of how varied and ordinary they appear — short, tall, flabby, lean, cleanshaven, bearded, bald, ponytailed. All but 14 were employed, in jobs that reflect the spectrum of middle- and working-class rural France: truck drivers, carpenters and trade workers, a prison guard, a nurse, an I.T. expert working for a bank, a local journalist. Surrounded by a phalanx of police officers, Gisèle Pelicot left the courthouse and was received by a huge crowd that spread out onto the road and cheered for her. In a brief statement to the horde of journalists outside the courtroom, Gisèle Pelicot said she had felt bouyed by all the public support over the past months, saying she “drew from it the strength to come back every day to face the long days of this trial.” She said she had never regretted opening the trial to the public. “I want to express my most profound gratitude to all the people who supported me during this ordeal,” she said. Who are the others convicted in the rape trial? All 51 defendants in the Gisèle Pelicot rape trial were found guilty on Thursday. Most of the accused received sentences of eight to 10 years, less than the 10- to 18-year terms that the public prosecutor had recommended. Ms. Pelicot’s ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her over nearly a decade and bringing other men to their home to participate, received the maximum sentence of 20 years. Fifteen of the 50 others were sentenced to eight years. In all, 41 of the men received prison sentences, including 18 who were already behind bars during the trial. Three were given deferred sentences because of their health, and six were released because of time already served. One is on the run and was tried and sentenced in absentia. Here are some of the others convicted: Jean-Pierre Maréchal: He pleaded guilty not to violating Ms. Pelicot, but to following Dominique Pelicot’s blueprint and drugging and raping his own wife — and inviting Mr. Pelicot along. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The prosecutor had recommended 17. (Mr. Pelicot was also convicted of raping Mr. Maréchal’s wife.) Mr. Maréchal’s lawyer, Paul Gontard, said after the sentencing that he did not intend to file an appeal. Charly Arbo: A laborer at a cement company, he was among the youngest accused, and was sentenced to 13 years. Mr. Arbo was 22 when he first went to the Pelicots’ home in 2016. While most of the men said they had gone to the home once, Mr. Arbo went six times. Joseph Cocco: Mr. Cocco, a retired manager of a beer company subsidiary, was convicted on a lesser charge of aggravated sexual assault. He was among the few defendants who asked Ms. Pelicot for forgiveness. He was sentenced to four years. Supporters of Gisèle Pelicot gathered at the courthouse in Avignon, France, on Thursday as the verdicts in her rape trial were read out. They held signs and sang songs. They cheered when David Pelicot, her eldest son, exited the courtroom after her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, and 50 other men were found guilty. Some in the crowd chanted: “We are strong, we are proud, and feminist and radical and angry.” Stefanie Ettmann, an Austrian living in Portugal, said she had traveled by plane, bus and train to reach Avignon on Wednesday night. She got to the courthouse before 7 a.m. on Thursday, joining a crowd that swelled into the hundreds. “I’m here to support Gisèle — she’s brought us so much healing. And her family. It’s a collective healing she’s bringing us,” Ms. Ettmann said. She said that Ms. Pelicot, by waiving her right to anonymity, had “brought us light,” allowing the public to see the excruciating evidence against her husband and the men he recruited to assault her. “We finally have a face speaking up, facing violence. And it’s a beautiful face, dignified, full of love,” she said. Image Stella Mezaber, 19, and Juliette Bernard, 20, both communications students in Avignon, said they had regularly attended local demonstrations in support of Ms. Pelicot since the trial began in September. On Thursday, they held signs that read, “A rape is a rape,” and “The problem isn’t feminists; it’s rapists.” “We’ve come here mainly to support, not in a spirit of voyeurism, but to show that what’s going on is important,” said Ms. Bernard, adding: “We want to show that we’re there, and that shame is changing sides.” In front of Avignon’s centuries-old ramparts, a white banner said simply, “Merci Gisèle.” Inside the courthouse, Raphaël Arnault, a local elected representative from the left-wing France Unbowed party, said that Ms. Pelicot had made rape a political issue again in France. The trial has set off a debate, in part, over whether France’s criminal code should be amended to say explicitly that sex without consent is rape. “My role as a politician is to do everything I can to prevent this kind of violence from happening again,” he said. Why are we not seeing photos of Dominique Pelicot? The court forbade photographs to be taken in the courthouse of him and the other accused men unless they gave written consent. They did not. We have been seeing photos of Gisèle Pelicot and her children because they have agreed to that. As the judge read out the verdict, a crowd of protesters, mostly feminist activists, were gathered in front of the courthouse in support of Gisèle Pelicot and her family. They have been making their voices heard with chants like “We are strong, we are proud, and feminist and radical and angry!” ‘The Daily’ podcast covers Gisèle Pelicot’s rise to feminist hero. A grandmother and retired manager at a public company who was unknown before her husband’s rape trial began in September, Gisèle Pelicot has emerged in France as a feminist hero known simply by her first name. As his victim, she could have kept the trial and the intimate horrors it unearthed private. Instead, Ms. Pelicot, 72, fought for the case to be open to the public, and the evidence it unearthed launched a profound soul-searching in France. Catherine Porter, a New York Times correspondent who has reported on the trial from the beginning, explained how on “The Daily.” The longest sentence apart from Dominique Pelicot’s was 15 years, for a man who went to the couple’s house six times and did not use a condom despite knowing that he was H.I.V.-positive. The Pelicot children just left the courtroom looking blank-faced. The couple’s daughter, Caroline, walked past a crowd of cameras From the moment of his arrest in late 2020, Dominique Pelicot has admitted to crushing sleeping pills into his wife’s food and drink for almost a decade and then inviting strangers he met online to come to their home in southern France to join him in raping her. He took thousands of video clips and photos of the encounters, which the police later used to identify and track down the accused. All but one of the 50 other defendants were charged with raping, sexually assaulting and attempting to rape his wife, Gisèle Pelicot. The outlier was Jean-Pierre Maréchal, who pleaded guilty to following Mr. Pelicot’s system, drugging his own wife and bringing Mr. Pelicot over to rape her. About 15 of the defendants pleaded guilty. The rest admitted to having sex with Ms. Pelicot, but argued that they had never intended to rape her. Most said that they had been lured by Mr. Pelicot to join the couple for what he said was a playful threesome, and that he had told them that Ms. Pelicot was pretending to sleep or had intentionally taken sleeping pills. They painted Mr. Pelicot as a master manipulator. Some claimed that he had drugged them too. Mr. Pelicot told the court he had loved his wife for 50 years and was driven by a deep-rooted depravity and addiction. He repeated time and again that every defendant fully knew he had drugged his wife without her knowledge. The case riveted France, in part because of the ordinary profiles of the accused, a group of defendants dubbed “Monsieur Tout-le-monde” — Mr. Every Man — by the French news media. Ranging in age from 27 to 74, they appeared to represent a cross-section of middle- and working-class men: tradesmen, firefighters, truck drivers, a journalist, a nurse. The court heard from their wives, parents, friends and children, who mostly described them as kind people incapable of rape. But the judges also heard various stunning explanations for how — after watching videos of them penetrating Ms. Pelicot while she lay inert, sedated and often snoring loudly — the defendants didn’t think of those acts as rape. Among the terms they used were “involuntary rape,” “accidental rape” and disassociated rape: “rape by body, but not mind.” This week, as the three-month trial drew to a close, the accused were given a last chance to offer any final words in their defense. Few took it. The head judge has now finished delivering the sentences. He tells the courtroom that the men convicted have 10 days to ask for an appeal. The verdict was read out to the crowd gathered outside the courthouse: “The main defendant, Dominique Pelicot, was found guilty of aggravated rape.” Among those gathered were protesters with signs reading “Stop violence against women” and “Justice for Gisèle Pelicot.” Gisèle Pelicot’s children appear to be reacting angrily to the news that some of the men will leave the courtroom free because they have already served sufficient time in prison. So far, the sentences being handed down for other accused are heavy, though not as heavy as those recommended by the prosecutor. Jean-Pierre Maréchal, who pleaded guilty to following Dominique Pelicot’s model and drugging his own wife to rape her, and bringing Pelicot along, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The prosecutor had recommended 17. Charly Arbo, a laborer at a cement company who was among the youngest accused and who went to the Pelicots’ six times, was just sentenced to 13 years. Jean-Pierre Maréchal, who pleaded guilty to following Dominique Pelicot’s model and drugging his own wife to rape her, and bringing Pelicot along, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The prosecutor had recommended 17. Charly Arbo, a laborer at a cement company who was among the youngest accused and who went to the Pelicots’ six times, was just sentenced to 13 years. Jean-Pierre Maréchal, who pleaded guilty to following Dominique Pelicot’s model and drugging his own wife to rape her, and bringing Pelicot along, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The prosecutor had recommended 17. Charly Arbo, a laborer at a cement company who was among the youngest accused and who went to the Pelicots’ six times, was just sentenced to 13 years. Until Sept. 2, 2024, most of the world did not really know what Gisèle Pelicot looked like. There were almost no photographs of Ms. Pelicot, a 72-year-old grandmother, online. She wasn’t on social media. No one except her friends and family knew she had an orange Louise Brooks bob and a penchant for round John Lennon sunglasses. But by Thursday, as Ms. Pelicot stood with her head held high in a courtroom in Avignon, France, as the verdicts in the harrowing four-month rape trial of her ex-husband and 50 other men were read, she had become the image of bravery across the globe. Her face has stared out from posters in protests across France and been pasted on the sides of buildings. It graced the digital cover of Vogue Germany and was used on a mock cover of Time’s person of the year issue. It has become the symbol of her own horrific experience, of course, but also that of every woman who was rendered helpless, lied to and abused. As one of her lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau, said, Ms. Pelicot’s face, with its seeming lack of artifice, has become the physical expression of the fact that “the shame has switched sides.” Image Rarely has someone who was so literally objectified — turned into a rag doll for men to violate as they saw fit — been able to so fully take back control of her own objectification and turn it into a picture of empowerment. In this, Ms. Pelicot’s image has become one in a long line of images that have transcended a unique story to become visual shorthand for a collective turning point. Think of the young man in the white shirt standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or the woman in the red dress being tear-gassed during anti-government demonstrations in Turkey in 2013, or the woman in the sundress standing before a line of police in riot gear during a Black Lives Matter protest in Baton Rouge, La., in 2016. Almost always, these photographs capture people who look utterly normal displaying extraordinary courage in an extraordinary time. And while Ms. Pelicot did not anticipate how much of a clarion call her face would become, Mr. Babonneau said, she knew that from the moment she made the decision to allow her trial to be public, rather than a closed-door hearing, people would be looking. Image “Every woman who has had to endure what she had to endure and takes the stand knows she is going to be observed, not just according to what she says, but how she looks,” Mr. Babonneau said. Specifically, he added, that she is going to be judged on whether she meets social and cultural “expectations of what a victim looks like.” Or, for that matter, what a hero looks like. Ms. Pelicot, he said, wanted to offer a different example. Envision a woman who may have been a victim but was not “powerless” anymore. A woman whose former husband may have destroyed her life but who did not succeed in destroying her. A woman who was often described, according to Mr. Babonneau, as looking “very French,” in that indescribable, you-know-it-when-you-see-it way. As LaDame Quicolle, an artist who created a large-scale portrait of Ms. Pelicot and posted it on the streets of Avignon, Lille, Paris, and Brussels, said, it was precisely because “Gisèle Pelicot is an ordinary woman” that her image was so striking. (The adopted name “LaDame Quicolle” translates as “the woman who sticks,” and the Pelicot image was part of series called “Watchwomen” featuring poster-size images of women who had experienced gender-based violence, metaphorically taking back the streets.) Put another way: While the men who abused her have been collectively called “Monsieur-Tout-le-Monde,” or Mr. Everyman, because they appear so average, Ms. Pelicot has taken her own averageness and made it part of her superpower. Image “Every woman who has had to endure what she had to endure and takes the stand knows she is going to be observed, not just according to what she says, but how she looks,” Mr. Babonneau said. Specifically, he added, that she is going to be judged on whether she meets social and cultural “expectations of what a victim looks like.” Or, for that matter, what a hero looks like. Ms. Pelicot, he said, wanted to offer a different example. Envision a woman who may have been a victim but was not “powerless” anymore. A woman whose former husband may have destroyed her life but who did not succeed in destroying her. A woman who was often described, according to Mr. Babonneau, as looking “very French,” in that indescribable, you-know-it-when-you-see-it way. As LaDame Quicolle, an artist who created a large-scale portrait of Ms. Pelicot and posted it on the streets of Avignon, Lille, Paris, and Brussels, said, it was precisely because “Gisèle Pelicot is an ordinary woman” that her image was so striking. (The adopted name “LaDame Quicolle” translates as “the woman who sticks,” and the Pelicot image was part of series called “Watchwomen” featuring poster-size images of women who had experienced gender-based violence, metaphorically taking back the streets.) Put another way: While the men who abused her have been collectively called “Monsieur-Tout-le-Monde,” or Mr. Everyman, because they appear so average, Ms. Pelicot has taken her own averageness and made it part of her superpower. Image “The eyes convey a lot of feelings,” Mr. Babonneau said. “We didn’t know how she would feel. Would she cry, feel lost, feel scared?” By covering her eyes, he said, Ms. Pelicot had “a measure of privacy.” He and his co-counsel deliberately chose to walk a few steps behind their client, the better to allow her to lead the way. “The public knew her with this look,” said Aline Dessine, a Belgian artist and illustrator. It is the look Ms. Dessine chose to convey when she created an image of Ms. Pelicot that she offered free to anyone who wished to demonstrate their allyship: a graphic portrait, identifiable solely through the shorthand of her haircut and sunglasses. As the trial progressed and the number of Ms. Pelicot’s supporters outside the courthouse grew, applauding her courage, “she felt she didn’t need the glasses anymore,” Mr. Babonneau said. She wanted to make eye contact with the women who surrounded her. Image But by then, the sunglasses had moved from protective device to signature, and from signature to semiology. By then, Ms. Pelicot understood just how much even her smallest choices mattered, even — maybe especially — though for much of her married life they had been taken from her. That is why, through days of testimony from her abusers, she wore a silk scarf with a print created by Aboriginal women in Australia and sent to her as a gesture of solidarity. It was but one among the many details that imbued her appearance with such power that it could transcend the trial and become a catalyst for change. In her familiarity, she contained multitudes. In her unstinting reflection, women saw themselves.