French rape case: Gisele Pelicot has ‘no fear’ of appeals trial, says lawyer

Gisele Pelicot, the French woman whose ex-husband was jailed for 20 years for orchestrating and committing mass rapes against her with dozens of strangers, has no fear of a new trial if there is an appeal, her lawyer said on Friday.

The 72-year-old has been hailed as a hero and feminist icon for her courage and dignity in the over three-month trial that ended on Thursday with all 51 defendants, including her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot, being convicted.

Gisele Pelicot said afterwards that she respected the verdicts of the court, although her elder son on Friday said that while satisfied with his father’s sentence, he was “disappointed” by the leniency of the other verdicts.

But after Gisele Pelicot described the process as a “difficult ordeal”, she risks having to go through another trial, with two defendants already lodging an appeal and the lawyer of her ex-husband not ruling out doing the same.

“If it were to happen, she has already indicated to us that she would face it — if she is healthy, obviously, since she is a lady who is now 72,” Stephane Babonneau, one of her lawyers, told France Inter radio.

“In any case, she has no fear of it, that is what she told us.”

Asked about his client’s state of mind, Babonneau replied that “she was very happy to go home. She is very relieved”.

‘Doesn’t want to be icon’

But he warned against seeing Gisele Pelicot as an “icon” even as she is applauded by world leaders for her courage in ordering the trial to be open to the public to raise awareness of sexual violence against women and drug-induced rape.

“What she doesn’t want is for other victims to think ‘this lady has extraordinary strength, I couldn’t do that’,” he said.

“She doesn’t want to be seen as an icon. She doesn’t want to be seen as someone extraordinary. And in reality, she is someone who remains very simple and who has decided to try to live her life in the most normal way,” he added.

Dominique Pelicot, who had confessed to the crimes, was found guilty by the court in the southern city of Avignon and sentenced to the maximum of 20 years in prison.

For almost a decade, Dominique Pelicot had recruited strangers online and invited them to the family home to rape Gisele Pelicot, who had been heavily drugged with sleeping pills. He also took videos of the rapes and took meticulous records, which were used as evidence in the trial.

Dozens of other defendants — the men who visited the Pelicot family home to rape Gisele Pelicot as she lay unconscious after being drugged by her husband — were handed terms of between three and 15 years.

Six of the jail terms were partly suspended, while six men walked free after the trial due to the terms of their sentencing.

‘Depraved transgressions’

“As for Dominique Pelicot I am satisfied with the verdict,” Gisele Pelicot’s son David, told broadcaster BFMTV.

“Now he must pay the bill for the atrocities he committed to our mother.” He added: “I am a bit more disappointed concerning what the other accused were given.”

David Pelicot said he and his sister Caroline and younger brother Florian were “quite surprised” with the sentences given to the other accused, saying they had been given less than the national average term for rape.

He said Dominique Pelicot would “take his secrets to his grave” and added that despite the over three months of trial “we have many questions to which we do not have answers”.

David Pelicot said there remained the question of whether Dominique Pelicot had also assaulted Caroline. He said his son had now filed a complaint against his grandfather for groping which could lead to a trial if accepted by prosecutors.

World leaders including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had on Thursday paid tribute to Gisele Pelicot and they were joined on Friday by French President Emmanuel Macron.

“Thank you Gisele Pelicot,” Macron wrote on X. “For all of us, because your dignity and your courage have moved and inspired France and the world.”

In a sign of the international resonance of the trial, Gisele Pelicot’s face dominated the front pages of newspapers across Europe.

“She may not have imagined that she was trading anonymity for the status of a feminist icon,” The Times of London said in an editorial.

“The dignity with which she has conducted herself stands in dramatic contrast to the depraved transgressions of her attackers who cowered behind masks as they entered court,” it added.