Gisèle Pelicot rape trial latest: Security guard who caught Dominique says he saw ‘fear in his eyes’

The youngest man to rape Giséle Pelicot after her predator ex-husband drugged her did so on the day his first daughter was born.

Joan Kawai, who has been jailed for 10 years, was just 23 when he visited Ms Pelicot’s family home in southern France to abuse her five years ago.

The former French conscript was among 47 men, including Ms Pelicot’s former husband Dominique Pelicot, convicted of rape at a packed French courthouse on Thursday.

Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez has commended the “dignity” of Gisèle Pelicot.

“How much dignity. Thank you, Gisèle Pelicot. Let shame change sides,” he said in a post on X.

Supporters shouted, “Thank you Gisèle” and “Bravo Gisele” as she exited the court. Others applauded and ululated.

After Pelicot was driven away, supporters gathered in a circle and sang songs including the anthem of the women’s liberation movement in the early 1970s.

It was a free chat site with a simple interface allowing users to communicate anonymously.

But the shut-down Coco forum turned into a “den of predators” with it now emerging it was used by Dominque Pelicot to organise the horrifying mass rape of his ex-wife Gisèle.

Pelicot, who was jailed for 20 years on Thursday, co-ordinated his abuse by finding many of the men who raped his wife on the illicit chat site, and then through the platform was able to conceal his crimes.

Inside a packed Vaucluse criminal courtroom in Avignon, 47 men, including Pelicot, were convicted of rape. Two others were found guilty of attempted rape, and another two guilty of sexual assault.

Alexander Butler reports:

The Pelicot mass rape trial which shook France and beyond is challenging the limits of existing legislation, a French legal expert said.

“I was relieved to see that all the accused had been convicted and, secondly, surprised by certain decisions and by the lack of severity (...) of certain decisions,” said Catherine Le Magueresse, a legal expert whose work looks at feminist criticism of law and sexual violence.

“Today the average sentence for rape is around 11 years and a few months, so that means that we are below the average sentence handed down, even though we have been constantly told that this was an extraordinary trial and that the way in which the accused had raped was particularly despicable.”

Le Magueresse said that if French rape law had included the principle of consent, none of the co-accused would have received lighter sentences, a fact she said she found extremely worrying.

The sentences of the 51 men charged with rape and other offences related to the campaign of abuse against Gisèle Pelicot, orchestrated by her ex-husband Dominque Pelicot, are being revealed on Thursday.

Mr Pelicot has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging his ex-wife, raping her, and inviting men to abuse her while unconscious for nearly a decade. He has also been found guilty of taking indecent images of his daughter and daughters-in-law.

While the 72-year-old had admitted the charges against him, most of the 50 other men on trial had denied charges of rape. They largely reside within the towns and villages around the southern French town of Mazan, where the Pelicots lived during their marriage.

Most have now been found guilty of aggravated rape and sentenced to time in prison. Here’s a full list of the defendants and their convictions:

Albert Toth reports:

Gisèle Pelicot was in court to look 51 of her abusers in the eye and see them convicted for a total of 428 years.

She watched her former husband of 50 years Dominique Pelicot be found guilty on Thursday and sentenced to 20 years in prison after drugging and raping her for a decade, and inviting others to join in the attack.

But without her courage and the intervention of a supermarket security guard, the horrors of the trial which has shaped France’s legal system and shocked the nation to its core may never have come to light.