Dominique Pelicot convicted with 50 others in rape trial that shocked world 19DEZ24

Gisele Pelicot arrives at the Avignon courthouse on Dec. 10. (Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images)

I am so impressed with Gisele Pelicot's bravery and commitment to show rape victims they can survive rape and get justice. I hope and pray whatever time she has left that God grant her strength, peace and joy with her family and friends and Him. Given the nature of their crimes, if dominique pelicot and the others were sentenced in the U.S. they would probably be pardoned by (NOT MY) pres elect drumpf / trump once he is sworn in. If he was born in America he too could be elected president. From the Washington Post.....

Dominique Pelicot convicted with 50 others in rape trial that shocked world

Pelicot, 72, was convicted of orchestrating the drugging and mass rape of his wife over almost a decade. Fifty other men were also found guilty, most of rape.

Updated

December 19, 2024 at 9:01 a.m. ESTtoday at 9:01 a.m. EST

By Leo Sands

Leo Sands is a breaking-news reporter and editor in The Washington Post’s London Hub, covering news as it unfolds around the world.

Judges on Thursday convicted a Frenchman of aggravated rape and other charges, after the 72-year-old admitted to repeatedly drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of other men to rape her over almost a decade.

A court in Avignon, southern France, sentenced Dominique Pelicot to 20 years in prison, the maximum allowed under French law, after finding him guilty of all charges. Prosecutors said he regularly found men online to abuse his wife, 72-year-old Gisèle Pelicot, after he had sedated her.

The three-month trial — held in open court at the request of Gisèle Pelicot, who said she wanted the world to know what had happened to her — has drawn horror and attention internationally, triggered a reckoning about sexual violence in France and turned the grandmother into a feminist hero.

“I have never regretted this decision. I now have confidence in our ability to collectively seize a future in which each woman and man can live in harmony with respect and mutual understanding,” she said outside the courtroom after the verdict was delivered.

All 50 of Dominique Pelicot’s co-defendants were also found guilty Thursday: 46 of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault. The judges handed them sentences ranging from a three-year suspended sentence to 15 years in prison.

A lawyer representing Dominique Pelicot told reporters that her client would make a decision over whether to lodge an appeal by Dec. 29.

Throughout the trial, Dominique Pelicot did not dispute the prosecution’s account. “I am a rapist, like everyone else in this room. They cannot say otherwise,” he said during the trial in September.

Dominique Pelicot appears with his lawyer at the courthouse in Avignon, France, on Monday. (Zziigg/Reuters)

Pelicot told the court he developed a routine of secretly sedating his wife by slipping crushed antianxiety medication into her food and drinks. The dose was enough to keep her unconscious for seven hours. Through an online forum, he recruited strangers to sexually assault her in their home and other places he and his wife were staying.

His activity came under scrutiny in 2020 after three women reported him for allegedly trying to film under their skirts, according to prosecutors. Police arrested him and seized his technological devices, where they found hundreds of photos and videos allegedly showing his wife being sexually assaulted by multiple men, one of Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers previously told The Washington Post.

About 15 of Pelicot’s co-defendants admitted their guilt, while others contested the charges against them. About 20 additional men who appeared in his videos have yet to be identified.

The defendants who appeared in court ranged in age from 26 to 74. They included truck drivers, army veterans, a fireman and a nurse. Some apologized directly to Gisèle Pelicot in the courtroom. One was accused of raping her up to six times and another of being inspired to commit a copycat crime against his own wife. One defendant was tried in absentia after fleeing the country.

Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to address her experiences publicly has forced a wider conversation about sexual violence in France. Throughout the trial, she asked people to consider why so many people were willing to participate in her abuse — and why no one went to the police to report what was going on.

Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of France’s National Assembly, thanked Pelicot for her courage, which she said had helped break societal taboos surrounding sexual assault. “The world is no longer the same thanks to you,” Braun-Pivet wrote in a statement on X.

DANCING AUSCHWITZ

THIS IS AMAZING AND BEAUTIFUL.......be sure to watch all three videos and listen to the piece from thestatewerein and the deadly beautiful piece from Worrytrain.

Jewish Australian artist Jane Korman created video installation of her family dancing in front of Holocaust landmarks to show different point of view.

 

A YouTube clip depicting five people dancing to the tune of Gloria Gaynor's song "I will survive" in front of Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz has resurfaced at the center of a trans-Atlantic controversy.

Australian Jewish artist Jane Korman filmed her three children and her father, 89-year-old Holocaust survivor Adolk, in the video clip "I Will Survive: Dancing Auschwitz."

The clip depicted the Korman family dancing in front of Holocaust land marks in Poland, including infamous entrance sign to Auschwitz death camp reading "Arbeit Macht Frei," a Polish synagogue, Dachau, Theresienstadt, and a memorial in Lodz.

Her father at one point in the clip even wore a shirt on which the word "Survivor" was written.

During a recent family visit to Israel Korman said that she thought of the idea after she encountered hatred toward Israel and Jews in Australia and added that she wanted to give her concerns presence during the heritage tour of Poland she recently took with her family, and take a different approach to the matter.

Many Jewish survivors have reacted gravely to the video, accusing her of disrespect. Yet Korman told Australian daily The Jewish News that “it might be disrespectful, but he [her father] is saying ‘we’re dancing, we should be dancing, we’re celebrating our survival and the generations after me,’ - the generation he’s created. We are affirming our existence.”

When the video was first released in December 2009, Melbourne media reacted strongly to the video and even accused Korman of using the Holocaust to promote her art.

“I wanted to make artwork that creates a fresh interpretation of historical memory,” Korman told Jewish News.

Apparently the video installation, which was exhibited in an Australia art gallery, was also picked up by several neo-Nazi websites in which they wrote "look, the Jews are still dancing in every corner. We aren't through with them; we will finish them in the next Holocaust."

	YouTube video clip 'Dancing Auschwitz.'

Korman's mother, who was also a Holocaust survivor, refused to join the trip because Poland held too many bad memories, Korman said and added that her father, on the other hand, mostly supported her idea of an artistic venture.  

This is the second part of the 'Dancing Auschwitz' video installation series. This video shows Marysia and Adolek Kohn, the Wysokiers, Leda Gringlass and me (Jane Korman) when I was a little girl dancing freely with my parents and their friends in a forest outside Melbourne.
This footage illustrates how both dancing, and my parents attitude to life, have been woven into my own life. Growing up, I was always present while my parents danced. As an adult, it seemed a natural process to merge the two influences that have shaped my life that of my parents' story and that of dance hence the project, Dancing Auschwitz.
Music: 'Dance Me to the End of Love' by Leonard Cohen. Soundtrack from 'Various Positions,' 1984

This clip complements the previous two clips in the series 'I Will Survive: Dancing Auschwitz.'
In June 2009, I, together with my father, my four children and niece, travelled to Poland to retrace my parents' past. While on a cattle wagon at Radagost Station in Lodz, my father experiences flashbacks. He reenacts the memory of his three-day journey in a similar cattle wagon, heading to Auschwitz, 65 years earlier, and appears to enter a trancelike state. In his native tongue, he carries on an improvised dialogue with the imaginary peasants he passed on the way.
This clip also raises my own personal concerns as a Jew. I ask my father: 'Do I look like a 'JEW?' I ask my mother: 'If you had your time again, would you choose to be Jewish?' and I ask my daughter: 'What did you feel when you returned to Australia?'

HERE is the story covering this from TheStateWereIn 3SEP10

Worrytrain - For Auschwitz

From the "Fog Dance, My Moth Kingdom" album (2007)

http://www.myspace.com/worrytrain

A fusion of neoclassical music and electronic noise by Joshua Neil Geissler.
Over the last five years Worrytrain, living outside of Chicago, has quietly surfaced. From tapping cinematic and experimental fields, to blending genres such as modern classical and noise. The instruments most often heard are mandolin, piano and cello making melodies that are often gentle yet violent.