One of the arguments that the majority of those accused in the Pelicot case have used is that they did not know that the woman was unconscious while they raped her and that they thought that consent to the relations on the part of her husband, Dominique Pelicot, was enough.
This defense has also been used by one of the accused, Philippe L, 62 years old. This man has been sentenced to one of the lowest sentences, five years, two exempt from serving. You will not have to go to prison as you have no criminal record.but wear an electronic bracelet.
Philippe L, 62, gave an interview to the newspaper ‘El Mundo’ before the verdict of the trial was announced. In the interview he admits that he was surprised when they accused him of rape, that he did not know what they were talking about. “My brain paralyzed,” he said.
According to what he told the newspaper, Philippe remembered (while he was in police custody) “a libertine couple, the man I spoke to online, that we met, that everything seemed very strange to me, that’s why I forgot those five minutes I was there.” home”.
As has happened with other accused, Philippe defends himself by saying that he could not imagine that Gisèle’s husband drugged her and assures ‘El Mundo’ that he has been manipulated by an evil being, a demon. This defense shows that the accused at no time thought about Gisèle, they simply saw her as a sexual object.
He assures in this interview that he would never have consciously hurt Gisèle and that if he had known that he was committing a crime, he would not have returned home peacefully. “I am not a rapist; I have a pure soul”he emphasizes.
For this man, single and without children, the Prosecutor’s Office requested 10 years in prison and at the time of the verdict, he had already been in preventive detention for 11 months. Although the psychiatrist described him as a reserved and shy man and determined that he did not fit the profile of a sexual abuser, he is one of the 50 accused of raping Giséle.
“It has been horrible, the experts, the psychiatrists, watching the videos… I spend every minute of every day absorbed by this, I am traumatized,” the man defends himself. Furthermore, he believes that he has already paid for part of what he has done after spending 11 months in prison and assures that he is not a criminal. “It’s like when you’re driving in a car and you take a wrong turn and take another one you don’t know. You step on the accelerator a little and a child crosses your path and you kill him. Are you a murderer?” he justifies himself.
