Mazan rape case: for the first time, the victim, Gisèle P., 72, speaks this Thursday in front of the 51 accused

Raped for ten years by dozens of strangers recruited by her husband on the internet, after being drugged with sleeping pills, Gisèle P. will speak for the first time on Thursday morning, in Avignon in the south of France, in front of the 51 men who abused her.

For three days, the main victim of this trial held before the criminal court of the Vaucluse department had remained stoic, silent, speaking only through her lawyers, who had notably relayed on Monday her refusal to hear the case in camera so that “shame changes sides”.

Even if there will be “extremely difficult times”, Mrs. P. “believes that she does not have to hide", that she “has nothing to be ashamed of”, explained Me Stéphane Babonneau, one of her two lawyers.

Silent, Gisèle P., 72, was nevertheless very attentive to the debates that began on Monday and are scheduled to last four months, until December 20. And the questions to the investigation director from some defense lawyers on Wednesday, asking for example whether the P. couple was a libertine couple or whether it was credible that Mrs. P. did not realize anything for ten years, apparently affected her.

“I want to answer”

After these accusations, Gisèle P.'s three children left the courtroom for a moment, incensed. Their mother stayed behind, alone. As if she didn't want to miss a single second of this trial from which she is waiting for answers.

“She is obviously outraged”, commented Me Antoine Camus, her other lawyer, on Wednesday, during a suspension of the session: “She would have liked to answer, we could feel her stamping her feet behind us, saying “but I want to answer, I want to answer, but I have to answer”. And we answered, “tomorrow!””

“Infinite” distress

Surrounded by her daughter, Caroline Darian (Editor's note: her pen name for the book she published in 2022, “And I stopped calling you dad”), and her two sons, Florian and David, Gisèle P. will therefore speak for the first time. And give his version of an extraordinary case.

Questioned on Wednesday, Divisional Commissioner Jérémie Bosse Platière, who led the investigation, underlined “the distress” of the victim when she learned of the facts, in the fall of 2020, from the police. Her husband had just been arrested for filming up the skirts of three women in a shopping center in Carpentras.

This distress "marked" the investigators, insisted the police officer.

"An absolutely terrible ordeal"

A victim of her husband's actions for ten years, from July 2011 to October 2020, first when they lived in the Paris region, then especially at their family home in Mazan, this small town in Vaucluse where they had moved in March 2013, Gisèle P. never realized she had been raped for years. By her husband, from whom she has been in the process of divorcing since the facts were revealed, and by complete strangers, now aged 26 to 74.

For Mrs. P., this trial will be “an absolutely terrible ordeal”, warned Mr. Camus, also the lawyer for the couple's three children: she “will experience for the first time, on a delayed basis, the rapes she suffered for ten years”, because she has “no memory of them”, he insisted.