Mazan rape trial: “Why did he fall into this ?” asks Céline, victim of her husband and Dominique Pélicot

Un face à face poignant, organisé par le bâtonnier d'Avignon Patrick Gontard. MIDI LIBRE – François Barrère

Terrible and moving face to face, Wednesday at the criminal court of Vaucluse, where 51 accused are being tried for rape aggravated by chemical submission, committed at the initiative of the septuagenarian on his own wife. Ill, the main accused of this extraordinary trial could be absent until Monday: the hearing could be suspended on Friday, September 13.

He is in the dock at the Vaucluse criminal court, she is testifying at the bar, they have not seen each other for over three years. Jean-Pierre, 63, was arrested in March 2021, and admitted that he had Dominique Pelicot come to his house so that he could rape Céline, 53, (name changed), knocked out by sleeping pills that the night visitor had provided.

A dozen rapes spread over five years

These two have been married for 22 years, have had five children, lived on a farm, and everyone describes a modest but happy family. And the crimes, the police said, were spread over five years, on at least a dozen occasions.   » explained to the psychiatrist Jean-Pierre, who met Dominique Pelicot, like the 50 other accused, on coco.fr.

“I wanted him to come to my house. The most exciting thing was for him to touch her. I was afraid, but it excited me. I would have been incapable of such actions, of raping a woman several times. He asked me several times to go to his place, but I refused." Céline never suspected anything.

A startled awakening, one evening

"With my husband, everything was great. He was always a very protective dad. In sexuality, he never asked me for absurd things." One evening, in 2018, she woke up "with a start", in the middle of the night. “I see a man standing against the window, with a flashing light, and my husband next to me. I don't have time to get up before the man goes out, I run after him, I ask my husband what's going on, he says it was to see my underwear and then he gets lost in his lies. I didn't believe all that, but to suspect that it was rape, it was unthinkable.”

Waiting for the truth

 She tells him that he won't touch her anymore, and life goes on as before. In the unsaid. We will discover others, after his arrest. “He destroyed us. We are just getting back on our feet, my children and I, and I am waiting for the truth. Why he fell into this, when nothing foreshadowed it? We got along so well.“

 Jean-Pierre did not say much to his family about his childhood. A large family, a farm with pigs, in Ariège. “One of the brothers said, that's enough, we have to say what our life has been” says his lawyer, Me Patrick Gontard.

Tied naked to trees, rape of girls

Aged over 80, he told the personality investigator, just like a sister, about their childhood. Their father ? "A scumbag". Who "brought men and couples into the house, organized orgies, the sex took place next to the children's bedroom."  Ultraviolent. There is talk of belt beatings, spitting, broken legs, children tied naked to trees all night. Rapes of girls. Boys and girls "who hid in rabbit huts to escape him."

"Child victims are much more likely to reproduce a victim or perpetrator journey, but not all" deciphers psychiatrist Laurent Layet. Who notes that Jean-Pierre did not express any feeling of guilt towards his victim in front of him.

Neither complaint nor divorce

"He hardly mentions it. He says that she did not leave him, as if that would allow him to wipe the slate clean." Céline did not file a complaint, neither against Dominique Pelicot, nor against her husband, who nevertheless admitted to having participated in the rapes. She didn't ask for a divorce either.

“He was such a wonderful man that I can't forget those years”. Is she under his influence ? “I am free to act. I am the one who decided not to file a complaint. I can try to understand how he got to this point, but I will never forgive. After all, these are atrocious scenes that he saw in his childhood. How do you expect that at some point it won't come back to haunt you?”

Smiles from a distance

 Mr. Gontard asks Jean-Pierre to stand up in the dock, and Céline to look at him. He looks sheepish, he glances around, tries to smile. She gives it back to him. “I still have affection for him. I can't abandon him. But I had to explain to my children that their beloved father was in prison for raping their mother. For me, he's already served his sentence. He's lost everything.” She leaves the room, dignified, head held high, her face ravaged by tears.

The trial could be suspended on Friday, as Dominique Pelicot's health, absent since Monday, has worsened. I subscribe to read the rest