The Frenchman was jailed for 20 years for drugging and raping his then-wife and soliciting dozens of men to do the same.
A Frenchman found guilty of drugging and raping his then-wife Gisele Pelicot and asking dozens of men to do the same for more than a decade will not appeal his conviction, his lawyer says.
“Dominique Pelicot has made the decision not to appeal the decision,” Beatrice Zavarro told AFP news agency on Monday.
Pelicot was convicted and sentenced to 20 years behind bars on December 19, after a trial that horrified France and beyond, while 50 co-defendants were also convicted and sentenced to between three and 15 years.
Gisele Pelicot, 72, was hailed as a hero for her courage and dignity throughout the three-month trial. She was praised for refusing to waive her right to a closed trial, saying she wanted to shift the shame associated with rape from victims to perpetrators.
Zavarro, however, added that a new trial will take place after 17 co-defendants have appealed and the others have until midnight Monday to decide. One of Gisele’s lawyers said there were no concerns about a new trial after the guilty verdicts were handed down.
An appeal “would force Gisele to go through a new trial, new confrontations, which Dominique Pelicot refuses,” Zavarro said, adding that “it’s time to finish justice.”
The convicted leader was “surprised to see these appeals, especially (from) individuals who in the dock apologized to Gisele Pelicot,” Zavarro added. “It seems to me that filing an appeal contradicts those words.”
Dominique Pelicot, who had been married to Gisele for 50 years, had pleaded guilty and the five-judge panel gave him the maximum sentence, as requested by prosecutors.
The court found 46 of the other defendants guilty of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault, handing down sentences of three to 15 years in prison, less than the four to 18 years the prosecution had sought.
The appeal decisions come weeks before Dominique and Gisele Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, is set to testify in a TV documentary about the use of drugs to enable rape and sexual abuse.
Darian herself believes she was drugged and raped by Dominique Pelicot after photographs of her naked and unconscious body were found among the detailed records her father kept of his crimes.
Scheduled to be broadcast by France 2 on January 21, the 90-minute film will include the testimony of six other rape victims who were unwittingly drugged, such as Gisele Pelicot. They include women attacked at France’s annual street music festival, Fete de la Musique, as young as 15, another by a boss and one by her father.
“We are finally lifting the lid on a social reality that is extremely underrated and far more widespread in France than people think,” Darian said at a press conference earlier this month.
