After 51 men were convicted Thursday in the drugging and rape trial that turned her into a feminist hero, Gisele Bellico said the ordeal was “very difficult” and expressed her support for other victims of sexual violence.
“We share the same battle,” she said in her first words after the court in the southern French city of Avignon issued prison sentences ranging from three to 20 years in the horrific case that stunned France and sparked a national review of the scourge of terrorism. Rape culture.
Bellicott – whose courage and patience turned her into an internationally recognized figure and an icon for many women – said she was thinking of her grandchildren after enduring more than three months of court hearings dealing with nearly a decade of rapes and other abuse. Her by her ex-husband and his partners.
“She led this fight for them, too,” she said of her grandchildren.
The court sentenced her ex-husband, Dominique Bellicot, to 20 years in prison on charges of drugging her, raping her, and allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious.
It was the maximum possible penalty under French law. He was declared guilty of all charges. At 72, that could mean he spends the rest of his life in prison. He will not be eligible to request early release until he has served at least two-thirds of his sentence.
Roger Arata, the chief judge of the court in the city of Avignon in southern France, asked Bellicot to stand before the sentencing. After he was delivered, he sat down and cried.
Arata read the verdicts one after another against Bellicot and the fifty other men tried in the case.
“You are therefore held guilty of aggravated rape of the person of Ms.,” said Judge Giselle Bellico as he examined the names on the long list of accused:
Giselle Bellicot sat on one side of the courtroom, facing the defendants, occasionally nodding as the verdicts were announced. Arata’s sentencing and guilty verdicts took just over an hour.
Dominique Bellicot’s lawyer, Beatrice Zavaro, said she would consider a possible appeal, but also expressed hope that Giselle Bellicot would find solace in the court rulings.
“I wanted Ms. Pellicott to be able to emerge from these hearings safely, and I believe the rulings will contribute to that relief for Ms. Pellicott,” she said.
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Of the 50 accused of rape, only one was acquitted but found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Another man was also convicted of the sexual assault charge for which he was tried, meaning all 51 defendants were guilty in one way or another.
In a side room where family members of the defendants watched the proceedings on television, some burst into tears and gasped as the verdicts were revealed.
The demonstrators gathered outside the courtroom and followed the proceedings on their phones. Some read the rulings and applauded when they were announced inside. Some of them were carrying oranges as symbolic gifts to the defendants heading to prison.
The prosecution had requested a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment for Dominique Bellicot, and sentences ranging from 10 to 18 years for the other defendants who were tried for rape.
But the court was more lenient than prosecutors had hoped, with several of them sentenced to less than a decade in prison.
For the other defendants, other than Dominic Belico, the sentences ranged from three to 15 years in prison, with some of them suspended for some time. Arata told six defendants that they were now free, accounting for the time they had already spent in detention while awaiting trial.
Dominic Bellicot admitted that for years he drugged his then wife of 50 years so that he and strangers he recruited online could assault her while filming the assaults.
The harrowing ordeal endured over nearly a decade by Giselle Bellico, now a 72-year-old grandmother, in what she believed to be a love marriage, and her courage during the traumatic trial transformed the retired electricity company worker into a feminist hero for the nation. .
The trial spanned more than three months, galvanizing activists against sexual violence and sparking calls for tougher measures to eradicate rape culture.
All the defendants were accused of participating in Dominique Bellicot’s sordid fantasies of rape and abuse that were enacted at the couple’s nursing home in the small town of Mazan in Provence and elsewhere.
Dominic Bellicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in food and drink he served his then-wife, knocking her out so badly that he could do whatever he wanted to her for hours.
One of the men was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison, not for assaulting Gisèle Bellicot, but for drugging and raping his wife – with the help and drugs of Dominique Bellicot, who was also convicted of raping that man’s wife.
The five judges voted by secret ballot on their rulings, with a majority in favor of the convictions and sentences.
Anti-sexual violence activists had hoped for ideal prison sentences, and viewed the trial as a potential turning point in the fight against sexual violence and the use of drugs to subjugate victims.
Gisèle Bellico’s courage to waive her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual assault and successfully push for hearings and the shocking evidence – including videos – to be heard in open court, has fueled nationwide conversations in France. And between families, couples and families. Groups of friends on how to better protect women and the role men can play in achieving this goal.
“Men started talking to women – their girlfriends, their mothers, their boyfriends – in ways they had never done before,” said Fanny Fores, 48, who joined other women from the feminist group Les Amazones in pasting messages of support for Giselle Bellico online. The walls surrounding Avignon before the verdict.
“It was embarrassing at first, but now we have real conversations,” she said.
Force added: “Some women realize, perhaps for the first time, that their ex-husbands assaulted them, or that someone close to them committed the assault against them.” “And men are starting to reckon with their own behavior or complicity – things they have ignored or failed to act on. It’s heavy, but it makes a difference.”
A large banner that activists hung on the city wall across from the courthouse read, “Merci Giselle” – Thank you Giselle.
Dominique Bellicot first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him surreptitiously photographing women’s skirts.
Police then found his library of homemade photos documenting years of abuse against his wife — more than 20,000 photos and videos, stored on computer drives and indexed in folders marked “Abuse,” “Her Rapists,” and “Night Alone” and others. Titles.
An abundance of evidence led police to the other accused. In the videos, investigators counted 72 different assailants, but were unable to identify all of them.
Although some of the accused – including Dominique Bellicot – pleaded guilty to rape, many did not, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings sparked a broader debate in France over whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include a specific reference to consent.
Some of the defendants argued that Dominique Bellicot’s consent also included his wife. Some sought to justify their behavior by insisting that they did not intend to rape anyone when they responded to their husband’s invitations to come to their home. Some blamed his door, saying he misled them into thinking they were engaging in consensual kink.
