Dominique Pelicot won’t appeal conviction in ex-wife’s rape trial in France

The Frenchman was jailed for 20 years for drugging and raping his then-wife and soliciting dozens of men to do the same.

A Frenchman found guilty of drugging and raping his then-wife Gisele Pelicot and soliciting dozens of men to do the same for more than a decade, will not appeal his conviction, says his lawyer.

“Dominique Pelicot has taken the decision to not appeal the verdict,” Beatrice Zavarro told the AFP news agency on Monday.

Pelicot was convicted and sentenced to 20 years behind bars on December 19 after a trial that horrified France and beyond, while 50 co-defendants were also convicted and handed various sentences of between three and 15 years.

Gisele Pelicot, 72, was hailed as a hero for her courage and dignity throughout the three-month trial. She was praised for refusing to waive her right to a closed trial, saying she wanted to shift the shame associated with rape from victims to perpetrators.

Zavarro, however, added that a new trial will take place since 17 co-defendants have appealed and the others have until midnight on Monday to decide. One of the lawyers for Gisele said there were no concerns over a new trial after the guilty verdicts were handed down.

An appeal “would force Gisele to undergo a new ordeal, new confrontations, which Dominique Pelicot refuses” to do, Zavarro said, adding that “it is time to finish judicially”.

The convicted ringleader had been “astonished to see these appeals, especially [from] individuals who in the dock apologised to Gisele Pelicot,” Zavarro added. “It seems to me that filing an appeal contradicts those words.”

Dominique Pelicot, who was married to Gisele for 50 years, had pleaded guilty and the panel of five judges gave him the maximum sentence, as requested by prosecutors.

The court found 46 of the other defendants guilty of rape, two guilty of attempted rape and two guilty of sexual assault, handing down sentences of between three and 15 years in jail, less than the four-to-18 years demanded by the prosecution.

The appeals decisions come weeks before the daughter of Dominique and Gisele Pelicot, Caroline Darian, will narrate a TV documentary on the use of drugs to enable rape and sexual abuse.

Darian herself believes she was drugged and raped by Dominique Pelicot, after pictures of her naked and unconscious body were found among the detailed records her father kept of his crimes.

Slated for broadcast by France 2 on January 21, the 90-minute film is set to include testimony from six other victims raped after being drugged unwittingly, as Gisele Pelicot was. They include women attacked at France’s annual Fete de la Musique festival of street music aged just 15, another by a boss and one even by her father.

“We are finally lifting the veil on a social reality which is hugely underestimated and much more widespread in France than people think,” Darian said at a news conference earlier this month.