Court limits screenings of videos in France mass rape case

Images of men allegedly raping a drugged Frenchwoman won’t be shown when the public or journalists are in court for the trial of dozens of defendants in a case that has horrified France, a judge ruled Friday.

Gisele Pelicot, whose ex-husband and 49 other men are charged over the decade-long alleged mass rape, urged that the footage be shown without restrictions.

The presiding judge in the trial of Dominique Pelicot and dozens of others ruled the videos could be shown at the request of the prosecution or defense, but not as a matter of course.

“We must not shy away from coming face to face with rape,” said Stephane Babonneau, one of Gisele Pelicot’s lawyers.

She demanded that the trial be public and had herself decided “from the outset that she would watch these videos”, he said.

But presiding judge Roger Arata said the images were “obscene and shocking” and would therefore not be shown systematically and not with media or the public present.

The ruling comes a day after a number of photos and videos were screened at the trial, without members of the public but in the presence of journalists, showing Dominique Pelicot and a co-accused, identified only as Jacques C., performing sexual acts on Gisele Pelicot who was visibly unconscious.

Prosecutor Jean-Francois Mayer subsequently asked the court to show the thousands of pictures and videos filmed and meticulously archived by Dominique Pelicot.

“Without this evidence there would have been no trial,” he said. “Mrs Pelicot remembers nothing. But even if she had remembered anything, it would have been discussed and contested.”

Lawyers representing Gisele Pelicot, as well as those defending Dominique Pelicot, backed the request, but several lawyers for the co-accused rejected it, saying descriptions of the video content was sufficient.

Babonneau said that “this is the trial with the potential to change society”, but for society to change “it must have the courage to face what rape actually is”.

The trial was atypical in that it has offered the possibility to show “a precise and real representation of rape, and not just a description in a police report”.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted to drugging Gisele Pelicot into unconsciousness and inviting strangers to rape her.

After arresting him for an unrelated event — filming up the skirts of women in a shopping center — police seized his computer and found a huge archive of videos and photos of his unconscious wife being raped.

The trial has horrified France, partly because 71-year-old Dominique Pelicot’s co-defendants include apparently ordinary men such as a fireman, a nurse and a journalist, many of them with families.

Forty-nine co-defendants are accused of raping or attempting to rape Gisele Pelicot, and one is accused of imitating Dominique Pelicot to sexually assault his own wife.