Gisèle Pelicota victim for years of dozens of rapes after being subjected to chemical submission by her husband, assured that respects the sentences pronounced this Thursday against his attackerswhile saying that his process also works for “unrecognized victims.”
“Right now I think about the unrecognized victims whose stories remain in the shadows, I want them to know that we share the same struggle,” Pelicot said in the Avignon court shortly after the sentences were handed down against the 51 convicts.
The victim has read a brief statement to the media and only at the endwhen asked by a journalist, said: “Respect for the court and the decision.”
He said this after many of the people who had come to the court door to support him showed their disappointment at the sentences handed down, in most cases much lower than those requested by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Only Dominique Pelicot, who orchestrated the rapes, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the same sentence that the Public Ministry had requested, also the maximum that could be requested for the crimes committed.
I have not regretted it at any time
Gisèle Pelicot avoided entering into assessments in her first statement and preferred to send a conciliatory message.
“I wanted, by opening the doors of this process, for society to make its debates its own. I have not regretted it at any time,” said the victim, who fought for the court hearings to be public even when some of rape videos recorded by her husband.
“I am confident now in our ability to collectively face a future in which everyone, men and women, can live in harmony with mutual respect and understanding,” he added.
Pelicot has thanked all the support he has received throughout the process and said that they gave him “strength to go to the hearing every day.”
He also had words of gratitude for his lawyers, journalists, victim aid associations but, above all, for his family, his three children and his four grandchildren: “They are the future and for them I wanted to carry out this combat”.
