Pelicot rape trial latest: Gisèle’s children ‘disappointed’ at abusers’ sentences after ex-husband jailed

Jacques Cubeau

Cubeau, 73, a lorry driver and one of the oldest on trial, is sentenced to five years for aggravated rape, according to the BBC.

Cyrille Delville

The former football player admitted to rape. He was sentenced to eight years for aggravated rape.

Simoné Mekenese

The only defendant who Gisèle recognised, Mekenese lived next door to the Pelicots. He was sentenced to nine years for aggravated rape.

Romain Vandevelde

Vandevelde is sentenced to 15 years, less than what prosecutors asked for, for aggravated rape.

In the beginning, it was simply euphoria. She felt it almost immediately: a sudden surge of energy, an intense, pure happiness. Love? Possibly. Jane, who is using a pseudonym, had never felt anything like it before. For months prior she’d been in a sluggish depression, sleeping too much and, despite her best efforts, finding little pleasure in anything. The date – her first with John* – was a turning point.

Neither wanted the night to end, certainly not Jane. And so their first date spilled over into the following day, and the day after that, and the day after that. For two weeks this feeling – soaring pleasure – kept coming. Suddenly, in this bubble with John, her low mood evaporated, she was excited, fizzing – she barely needed more than four hours’ sleep per night. “We talked about marriage, about children, our life goals,” says Jane.

Special correspondent Zoë Beaty reports:

Dominique Pelicot appeared to cry while the verdict was being read out, according to a BBC reporter inside the courtroom.

He has been sentenced to the maximum of 20 years in prison.

Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer has spoken to the press outside the courtroom.

She says “no decision” has been made on whether Pelicot will appeal the verdict.

“I hope that it’s a good thing for justice that these debates were able to take place in the environment they did,” she added. “We felt that the necesary respect was given.

“Mr Pelicot was not necessarily the conductor that was alleged, but its important to actually look at the differnce made between the verdict for Mr Pelicot and for the co-defendants making up this orchestra, as it has been described,” she said, in quotes translated by Sky News.

In an unusual move, Gisèle Pelicot waived her anonymity as a victim of rape, in the hope that it would encourage other victims of rape and sexual abuse to step forward.

Speaking during the trial, Ms Pelicot said: “For me this is the trial of cowardice, there is no other way to describe it.

“When you walk into a bedroom and see a motionless body, at what point (do you decide) not to react,” she addressed the men in the courtroom. She said there was no excuse for abusing her when she was unconscious.

"Why did you not leave immediately to report it to the police?," she asked. “It is time for society to look at this macho, patriarchal society and change the way it looks at rape.”

Gisèle Pelicot’s story is traumatic, extreme, and yet another example of men and their unfair, ingrained social power over women – her experience should be another moment when society says “enough is enough”.

And yet there is a group of people desperately distant from the urgent activism: men themselves.

Pelicot’s powerful testimony to a courtroom about her male attackers should be persuasive enough to reveal to men the gross injustice and deep-rooted unfairness at the heart of our patriarchal society.

It is now on men – all men – to speak out. The harrowing descriptions of a woman being drugged and raped cannot be ignored or passed off as an indefensible extreme which requires no vocal response. Silent disapproval or disgust is not enough.

Daniel Reast writes:

Supporters outside the courthouse have been holding placards in support of Gisèle Pelicot as she watched her abusers, including ex-husband Dominique Pelicot, have guilty verdicts read out against them.

“So that shame changes sides”, reads one. Another says: "All the women on earth support you, thank you Gisele".