The broadcast of videos of the Mazan rapes will not take place behind closed doors

Photo: Miguel Medina Agence France-Presse “For Gisèle Pelicot, it is too late, the damage is done,” according to one of her lawyers, Me Babonneau. “But if these same debates, through their publicity, help prevent other women from having to go through this, then she will find meaning in her suffering.”

Philippe Siuberski – Agence France-Presse in Avignon

Posted at 9:54 am

• Europe

The Vaucluse criminal court, which has been trying a septuagenarian accused of raping and having his wife raped by strangers recruited on the Internet since September, finally authorized on Friday the broadcast of videos and photos of the events in the presence of the press and the public.

In a spectacular turnaround criticized by many defense lawyers, the president of the court, Roger Arata, specified that the broadcast of these images would be preceded by an “announcement allowing sensitive people and minors to leave the room.”

Videos concerning some of the accused are to be screened starting this Friday afternoon.

After a debate lasting nearly two hours followed by a long deliberation, the court reversed the decision of its president and followed the attorney general who ruled on Friday for the lifting of the closed-door hearing on the images.

The lawyers for the victim, Gisèle Pelicot, described the decision as a “victory”.

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“But a victory in a fight that should not have been fought,” said Stéphane Babonneau, according to whom French law has granted rape victims the right for over 40 years to decide whether or not the proceedings should be public.

The broadcast of these images, preceded by an announcement, will “not be systematic,” Mr. Arata specified, and will only take place in cases “strictly necessary for the manifestation of the truth,” at the request of one of the parties.

Since the start of the trial on September 2 in Avignon, the hearing room has been reserved for the court, the parties and the press, with the public in an adjoining broadcast room.

On September 20, at the end of the third week of the trial, President Arata had banned the broadcast of the images to the public and the press, explaining that they were “indecent and shocking” and should therefore be reserved only for the parties to the trial and the magistrates.

To “cause the theory of accidental rape to collapse”

Five days later, Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers have once again called for the lifting of these restrictions, in the name of the fight that she is now leading against sexual violence.

It was on their written submissions that the parties debated at length before the court on Friday morning.

Ms. Pelicot, raped for about ten years years by her husband and by dozens of men he had contacted on the Internet, after he had drugged her with anxiolytics, had opposed the closed hearing since the start of the trial on September 2.

For Ms. Pelicot’s lawyers, full publicity of the proceedings, with photos and videos, is important.

“For Gisèle Pelicot, it is too late, the damage is done,” according to Me Stéphane Babonneau. “But if these same proceedings, through their publicity, prevent other women from having to go through this, then she will find meaning in her suffering.”

For her other lawyer, Me Antoine Camus, these videos “cause the theory of accidental rape to collapse.”

“They show that these were rapes of opportunity and that, beyond that, it was a question of debasing, humiliating, and sullying, it was in reality a question of hatred of women. No one reported the facts, each contributed in their own small way to this banality of rape, to this banality of evil,” added Me Camus.

Several lawyers for the 50 co-accused in this extraordinary trial, however, fiercely opposed the presence of the public and the press.

“Justice does not need that to pass, what is the point of these nauseating screenings ? We were treated to a screening of a first case. A film was not enough ?” thus pleaded Me Olivier Lantelme.

“We do not have to move from a popular tribunal in the name of the French people to a tribunal of the mob”, thundered Me Paul-Roger Gontard.