Mazan rapes: “Society gave Gisèle Pelicot the strength to come back and confront her rapists every day,” says her lawyer

Me Antoine Camus, l'un des deux avocats de Gisèle Pelicot : “C’est notre génération qui est au combat sur ce dossier-là.” MIDI LIBRE – François Barrère

This is one of the many paradoxes of this extraordinary trial: Me Antoine Camus, one of Gisèle Pelicot's two lawyers, had never defended a rape victim before. The experience lived by this specialist in financial delinquency will remain extraordinary for him.  

How did you become Gisèle Pelicot's lawyer, you who had never pleaded a rape case at the assizes? ?

I have been a lawyer at the Paris bar for 21 years, a partner in a business law firm, and my job is financial, corporate or executive criminal cases. I have been involved in major cases, such as the Karabatic affair in Montpellier or the PIP breast implants in Marseille. It was a combination of circumstances that made us cross paths three years ago. She was the one who called me. I understood in less than an hour that I had someone exceptional on the other end of the line. I had resilience on the phone. A courageous woman, with a lot of modesty and dignity and who really needed help. I said yes right away, I hung up and I said to myself, but what have you done ? What will your partners say ? It was about being absent from the firm for months. I am not a technician of the courts, I needed a reinforcement and I introduced him to Stéphane Babonneau with whom the contact was made immediately. Trust was established, it is a three-way chemistry without which nothing would have been possible.

If we look back, what images come back to you from these four months of hearings ?

The first weekend before the opening. We know that we are going to enter a storm, that it is going to last, that it is going to be painful. The family is destroyed, they are both extremely moved and terrified at the idea of ​​meeting Dominique Pelicot for the first time in the dock. They all wonder what look he'll have, will he hide, will he have aged, and won't they jump at his throat?

All these questions made them terribly anxious. They also feared the presence of the press. September 2nd was also the start of the school year, there were little children in the playgrounds who were called Pelicot and who had been protected until then. And it made them sick that these little children were at risk in the playground of being singled out, being designated as part of the monster's family.

It would have been very violent for Gisèle Pelicot to have to watch these videos alone with her rapists, locked in a room and against what she had decided: to invite the whole of society to take up this case. This file is the videos.

There is that day this decision to demand a public trial ?

The first day of course was extremely emotional. Gisèle Pelicot had made the decision in May, she wanted total publicity. This issue came up a few days later, on the question of the closed session during the broadcast of the videos. It was decisive. This time, we were outraged. On the pretext of the dignity of the debates, the president ordered a partial closed session every time the videos were shown.

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For us, it was shocking in more ways than one. Our analysis was that the president did not have this power. The civil party has the keys to the courtroom, and this is a way of taking it away from him. And then to come and say that images of a rape are degrading and an attack on the dignity of the human person, no! It is not the representation of the crime that is offensive, it is the crime itself!

Everything in this story was shocking. I think that the president himself was probably taken aback by the violence of these images, by the number of the public, by the importance of the media coverage, that he had not anticipated all of this in its magnitude. That he reversed these decisions was an immense relief for us.

It would have been very violent for Gisèle Pelicot to have to watch these videos alone with her rapists, locked in a room and going against what she had decided: to invite the whole of society to take up this case. This case is the videos.

What is the point, what need to put this victim on trial ? I found it very violent, very unworthy. We can decide to defend rapes differently, with dignity and honor. Why reproduce what we have been doing for 50 years and which is no longer audible today ?

What surprised you during the debates ?

I am not used to rape trials, but discovering that in 2024 a rape trial clearly goes through this preliminary phase of ensuring and demonstrating that the civil party is a good victim was an immediate outrage for me. Gisèle Pelicot took it very badly. I spoke of institutional violence and courtroom mistreatment.

A trial is always violent, especially for the accused. Some are presented in a glass cage, they are roughly treated, they are pushed into their entrenchments. But here, we have the videos. The question was not to deny the fact that our client was a victim, she was incontestably one. What is the point, what need to put this victim on trial ? I found it very violent, very unworthy. We can decide to defend rapes differently, with dignity and honor. Why reproduce what we have been doing for 50 years and which is no longer audible today ?

What other images will remain in your memory ?

Obviously the guards of honor for Gisèle when leaving, the applause when returning. This is something we have never seen and will probably never see again. This case has a very strong resonance in society, even though it is very atypical. And a sort of conversation took place between Gisèle Pelicot and public opinion.

She decided to open the doors to the greatest number, to society, and society gave her the strength through its encouragement to come back every day and confront her rapists. By inflicting something on herself that was not self-evident: she could have, as was the goal, stayed only 15 days.

If she came back day after day to hear all these horrors, it is only because all these women and men wrote to her, testified and told her, thanks to you, I have the courage to divorce, to go through the door of a police station, if you do it, I must do it. There was a kind of give and take, and witnessing that is magnificent. This gives a lot of meaning to the judiciary: our hearings are places where debates can have a very deep resonance.

The sequence of “there is rape and rape”, pronounced by one of the defense lawyers, was also a moment of very strong indignation. It went in the same sequence as the trial made to the victim. It was a real indignation, taken at first as a clumsiness, before we realized over the weeks that it was a defense theorized and deployed with care. When we realized that there was rape with caress and violent rape… that we had to distinguish from rape by clumsiness, by surprise, by politeness, by I don't know what…

When we realized that, we said to ourselves what is happening here, it is a vision of the world and that we see two societal projects clashing in this court, one of which seemed to us to be from another time.

And then I want to say that I very quickly became aware that we are also in a generational battle. I am 45 years old, and very clearly, at that age, we all have people around us who are affected by sexual violence. It is our generation that is fighting on this issue.

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