French Mass Rape Trial, Gisele Pelicot Lawyer 'This Level of Depravity? I Have Never Seen Anything Like It'
Last edited Wed Dec 4, 2024, 02:57 PM - Edit history (1)
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'Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer: ‘This level of depravity? I have never seen anything like it,’ The Guardian, Dec. 3, 2024. Ed.
- Stéphane Babonneau had to watch thousands of videos of Gisèle Pelicot being raped, before disclosing their horror to her. He explains how she found the courage to cope – and to change the world for other survivors
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When the lawyer Stéphane Babonneau took on what would become the most horrific case of his career, he faced a dilemma. He knew his client Gisèle Pelicot had to be told details of the hundreds of rapes her husband had subjected her to while she was unconscious over the course of almost a decade, but how could he possibly do so without causing her even more harm?
By 2022, when Babonneau took the case, Gisèle knew that her husband, Dominique, had drugged her and invited strangers he met online into their home to assault her, but she had no idea of the specifics.
Babonneau would find out after watching many of the 20,000 videos and photographs Gisèle’s husband had made over the years. “Everyone was extremely worried she could have a nervous breakdown,” Babonneau says. “What would happen when she was faced with the full truth and scale of what was done to her?” As a seasoned criminal lawyer, Babonneau says he is “used to seeing very disturbing things, but this level of depravity and inhumanity and trauma? I had never seen anything like it before.”
Dominique was first interviewed by French police in September 2020, when he was arrested for filming under the skirts of female customers in a supermarket. It was only when the police examined his phone, computer and an external hard drive that evidence emerged of his abuse of his wife. Two months later, he was taken into custody and Gisèle, 72, learned the truth about the man she had considered a “perfect, caring, attentive” husband, father and grandfather during their 50 years of marriage.
Police used facial-recognition software to identify 50 of the 70-plus men captured on the thousands of videos Dominique made of his wife being raped and sexually abused. He admitted to drugging his wife with anti-anxiety medication and sleeping tablets, dissolved into her evening glass of wine, her breakfast or the sorbet he would bring her for dessert. She would wake up from her near coma remembering nothing – and became increasingly afraid that her memory loss was due to a brain tumour or Alzheimer’s disease...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/03/gisele-pelicot-lawyer-depravity-never-seen-anything-like-it
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'French prosecutors demand 20-year sentence for ex-husband in Pelicot mass rape case,' France24, Nov. 25, 2024,
https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20241125-court-moves-to-sentencing-in-french-mass-rape-trial
= new reply since forum marked as read
They should castrate him...without anesthetic!
