Here’s what you need to know about the mass rape trial

Judges in the French city of Avignon sentenced Dominique Pelicot to 20 years in prison for aggravated rape in a mass rape trial that turned a 72-year-old woman into a feminist icon.

The court found 47 of the men guilty of rape, two guilty of attempted rape and two guilty of sexual assault.

For almost a decade, Gisèle Pelicot was drugged by her ex-husband Dominique, who admitted to raping her and inviting dozens of men he had recruited online to have sex with her in the bed at their home while she was unconscious and unconscious.

It was his decision to renounce his anonymity and launch this trial into public light; in his words, making “shame change sides” from the victim to the rapist.

Although Dominique Pelicot admits the charges against him, most of the other men on trial deny that what they did was rape.

Dominique has also been found guilty of attempted aggravated rape of the wife of one of the co-defendants, Jean-Pierre Marechal. Dominique was also found guilty of making indecent images of his daughter Caroline and daughters-in-law Aurore and Celine.

Marechal was found guilty of attempted rape and aggravated rape of his wife, Cillia, as well as drugging her.

Prosecutors had sought prison terms of between four and 20 years, the maximum penalty for an aggravated rape charge.

One of the defendants, who has admitted to the charges, previously called The trial was rushed and “failed.”

Activists said this case demonstrated the need to incorporate consent into France’s rape laws, as in other European countries.

From 2011 to 2020, Dominique Pelicot supplied his wife with tranquilizers and sleeping pills without her knowledge, ground them into powder and added them to her food and drink.

Gisèle Pelicot suffered memory loss and blackouts due to drugs and has spoken out about 10 years of her life she has lost.

He was finally caught because a security guard reported him to the police for taking upskirt photos of women in a supermarket.

“I thought we were a very close couple,” he once told the court. Instead, her husband went to a notorious but now banned website called Coco.fr to invite local men to her home to have sex with her while she was in a coma.

“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” said Gisèle Pelicot at the beginning of the trial.

Since early September, Judge Roger Arata and his four colleagues have heard how 50 men, now aged between 27 and 74, visited the Pelicot home in the village of Mazan.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted all charges against him: drugging and raping his wife and recruiting dozens of men to rape her. Prosecutors want judges to impose the maximum prison sentence of 20 years for aggravated rape.

“I am a rapist,” he told the judges. “I acknowledge all the facts (of the case) in their entirety.” He has apologized to his ex-wife and three children, but his actions have devastated the Pelicot family.

The other defendants come from all walks of life and most of them come from a 50-kilometer (30-mile) radius of the Pelicot village of Mazan. Being firefighters, security guards and truck drivers has earned them the nickname Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr. Anyone). Most of them also have children.

Fifty of the 51 are charged with aggravated rape and attempted rape.

Romain V, 63, faces 18 years in prison if convicted. He is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six separate occasions knowing that he was HIV positive. His lawyer says he could not have transmitted the infection since he had been undergoing treatment for years.

Another 10 men could face sentences of 15 to 17 years, and prosecutors are seeking prison terms of 10 to 14 years for 38 of the others.

Before the verdict was announced, one of the few men who admitted to having been raped told the BBC through his daughter that many people had made a decision immediately: “There was not enough time. For me it was a botched job.”

The average prison sentence for rape in France is 11.1 years, according to the French Ministry of Justice.

A man is charged with aggravated sexual assault instead of rape. Prosecutors say Joseph C, a 69-year-old retired sports coach and grandfather, should face the lightest sentence of four years in prison.

Some of them have apologized for their behavior, but many have not.

Cyril B apologized to Gisèle Pelicot.

“I am ashamed of myself, I am disgusted,” Jean-Pierre M. said this week. His lawyer hoped the judges would take his regret into account.

Not only was this case conducted in public view, but the evidence against all defendants was videotaped by Dominique Pelicot at the time and then presented to the court.

Gisèle Pelicot, who divorced her husband, said the men “treated me like a rag doll.” “Don’t talk to me about sex scenes. They’re rape scenes,” he said.

None of the accused has therefore been able to dispute the accusation that they were in Gisèle Pelicot’s room while she was in a coma.

His defense has been based on the definition of rape, because it currently involves any type of sexual penetration “through violence, coercion, threat or surprise.” That means prosecutors must prove intent to rape.

Prosecutor Laure Chabaud told the court that no one could now say that “because she didn’t say anything, she gave her consent, something that belongs to a bygone era.”

Thousands of people have joined protests in support of Gisèle Pelicot in France. And women have stood in front of the court every day chanting one of the phrases their lawyers said in court: “Shame is changing sides.”

Gisèle Pelicot has attended the trial almost every day and appeared in court with her sunglasses shortly before nine.

His decision to waive his anonymity is highly unusual, but he has remained steadfast throughout. “I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pelicot did it, I can do it too.”

But she has made it clear that behind her facade of strength “hides a field of ruins” and, despite widespread acclaim for what she has done, she is a reluctant hero.

“She keeps repeating: ‘I’m normal,’ she doesn’t want to be considered an icon,” her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau told BBC correspondent Emma Barnett.

“Women generally have a strength that they can’t even imagine and that they have to rely on. That’s their message.”

Lawyers for the 51 defendants have highlighted the normal lives they led, although a court-appointed psychiatrist, Laurent Layet, testified that they were neither ordinary nor “monsters.”

In the first weeks of the trial, the mayor of the town of Mazan told the BBC that the case could have been much more serious since no one died.

But those comments sparked protests across France and the mayor quickly apologized. He has since said he is retiring from public life.

The fact that the trial was held in public has meant that each session has been reported in detail.

Elsa Labouret, of the activist group Dare to be Feminist, told the BBC: “(Gisèle Pelicot) decided to make this bigger than herself. To make this focus on the way we, as a society, deal with sexual violence “.