Dominique Pélicot’s last defense: “I have become the devil’s advocate, but I defend human beings”

He had the most difficult role today: defending, in a speech lasting just over an hour, what is considered, in the words of his own daughter, the biggest sexual predator of recent decades in France: Dominique Pélicot, the man who drugged his wife, Gisèle Pélicot, for 10 years so that other men could rape her, including the other 50 defendants in the trial prosecuting them.

Her lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro, has arrived at the lectern with her red glasses and her colored papers, where she has been taking notes of the statements for months, to read her defense statement: the last opportunity to try, if not reduce the sentence that The Prosecutor’s Office asks for Dominique Pélicot (20 years, the maximum, for aggravated rape), at least to show “that other Dominique Pélicot, the human being“, Dominique Pélicot before becoming a pervert.

“Since September 2 (the date of the start of the trial against him), I have become the devil’s advocate,” she began her speech at noon. Yesterday, a group of feminists at the door of the Avignon court, where the trial is being held, scolded her for defending him. However, Zavarro has made a clear, honest, humane defensefrom his client: “He has acknowledged everything, he has not even asked for conditional release in all this time.” He was arrested in 2020 and could have done it.

That September 2, when the trial started and Zavarro became the “devil’s advocate,” was her birthday. Today, the day he has to defend him for the last time, is his: he turns 73 years old. “Since that day, September 2, Mr. Pélicot, it is you and me against the world“, he declared, about that impossible defense: “That bond that we have created has generated enormous loneliness in me, which weighs a lot.”

He arrived at court in a red suit, bringing light and color to a dark courtroom, where there are often bad manners. She defends the husband who drugged and raped Gisèle Pélicot, but has taken her side in the debates. Always elegant in these three months that the trial lasts, today he has tried to humanize that other man, not the monster, but the one who experienced sexual violence since childhood, suffered abuse, with a father described as tyrant and authoritarian, a “submissive” mother “.

His lawyer made a plea defending “the human, the other Dominique Pélicot, the first”, before going awry. “As the psychiatrists in this room have said, We are not born perverse, we become perverse“The psychologists and psychiatrists who treated him point out that he has a double personality: the good and charismatic man, whom everyone admired, and the dark being, which no one saw.

“Today I defend that other Dominique Pélicot,” and includes the statement of one of the defendants in the trial, one of the youngest, who said a few weeks ago: “My worst enemy is me”. The aforementioned (13 years in prison is requested for him) looked attentively at Pélicot’s lawyer.

The majority of the accused allege that he manipulated them, that he sold them a “scenario of debauchery, a couple’s fantasy”: she, Gisèle Pélicot, was unconscious. He recruited them on the internet. They were going to his house. Pélicot had previously drugged her. Zavarro has listed the excuses of the 50 involved, who evade their responsibility and delegate it to their client: those who wanted something quick and easy, those who did not identify themselves as rapists because he “had given them consent”: “The common rapist is a good Frenchman, he is not a psychopath or an immigrant”.

He has dismantled the arguments of the defense of the 50 accused: “some say that they were drugged by Pélicot, that they had been manipulated, that he was violent… “Did he threaten anyone? No. Did you lock the door to the house? No. Is he responsible for the actions of each of them? No”.

Beatrice Zavarro began her speech and ended it by addressing Gisèle Pélicot, two icons in a room full of men. “Madam, I am addressing you because I have deep respect for you and what you represent, for your dignity. I want you to know that.”

Finished his speech, addressing her and her family: “Keep in your memory that first Dominique, the one who took care of you, the one who, I believe, loved you deeply. Forget the one I defend today“. Gisèle looked at her, moved. He, throughout the speech, lowered his head.