Gisele Pelicot, who was allegedly drugged by her now former husband so that he and others could assault her, arrives at the court house in Avignon, southern France, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly)

AVIGNON, France (AP) — A court in France on Thursday sentenced the ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot to 20 years of imprisonment for drugging and raping her and allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious, in abuse that lasted nearly a decade.

The sentence against Dominique Pelicot was the maximum possible under French law. He was declared guilty of all charges against him. At age 72, it could mean that he spends the rest of his life in prison.

Roger Arata, the lead judge of the court in the southern French city Avignon, told Pelicot to stand for the sentencing. After it was delivered, he sat back down and cried.

Arata read out verdicts one after the other against Pelicot and the 50 other men tried in the case that shook France.

“You are therefore declared guilty of aggravated rape on the person of Mme. Gisèle Pelicot,” the judge said as he worked his way through names on the list.

Gisèle Pelicot was seated on one side of the courtroom, facing the defendants as the verdicts were announced.

Of the 50 accused of rape, just one was acquitted but was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Another man was also found guilty on the sexual assault charge that he was tried for — meaning all 51 of the defendants were found guilty in one way or another.

In a side room where family members of the defendants watched the proceedings on television screens, some burst into tears and gasped as the sentences were revealed.

Dominique Pelicot admitted that for years he drugged his then wife of 50 years so that he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.

The appalling ordeal inflicted over nearly a decade on Gisèle Pelicot, now a 72-year-old grandmother, in what she thought was a loving marriage and her courage during the bruising trial have transformed the retired power company worker into a feminist hero of the nation.

Stretching over more than three months, the trial galvanized campaigners against sexual violence and spurred calls for tougher measures to stamp out rape culture.

Prosecutors had asked that Dominique Pelicot get the maximum penalty of 20 years and for sentences of 10 to 18 years for the others tried for rape.

But the court was mostly more lenient than prosecutors had hoped, with many sentenced to less than a decade in prison.

The defendants were all accused of having taken part in Dominique Pelicot's sordid rape and abuse fantasies that were acted out in the couple's retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.

Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in food and drink that he gave his then wife, knocking her out so profoundly that he could do what he wanted to her for hours.

One of the men was found guilty, not for assaulting Gisèle Pelicot but for drugging and raping his own wife — with help and drugs from Dominique Pelicot, who was also found guilty of raping that man's wife, too.

The five judges voted by secret ballot in their rulings, with majority votes for the convictions and sentences.

Campaigners against sexual violence were hoping for exemplary prison terms and view the trial as a possible turning point in the fight against rape culture and the use of drugs to subdue victims.

Gisèle Pelicot's courage in waiving her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual abuse and successfully pushing for the hearings and shocking evidence — including videos — to be heard in open court have fueled conversations both on a national level in France and among families, couples and groups of friends about how to better protect women and the role that men can play in pursuing that goal.

“Men are starting to talk to women — their girlfriends, mothers and friends — in ways they hadn’t before,” said Fanny Foures, 48, who joined other women from the feminist group Les Amazones in gluing messages of support for Gisèle Pelicot on walls around Avignon before the verdict.

“It was awkward at first, but now real dialogues are happening," she said.

“Some women are realizing, maybe for the first time, that their ex-husbands violated them, or that someone close to them committed abuse,” Foures added. “And men are starting to reckon with their own behavior or complicity — things they’ve ignored or failed to act on. It’s heavy, but it’s creating change.”

A large banner that campaigners hung on a city wall opposite the courthouse read, “MERCI GISELE” — thank you Gisèle.

Dominique Pelicot first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him surreptitiously filming up women’s skirts.

Police subsequently found his library of homemade images documenting years of abuse inflicted on his wife — more than 20,000 photos and videos in all, stored on computer drives and catalogued in folders marked “abuse,” “her rapists,” “night alone” and other titles.

The abundance of evidence led police to the other defendants. In the videos, investigators counted 72 different abusers, but weren't able to identify them all.

Although some of the accused — including Dominique Pelicot — acknowledged that they were guilty of rape, many didn't, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings sparked wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.

Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent covered his wife, too. Some sought to excuse their behavior by insisting that they hadn’t intended to rape anyone when they responded to the husband’s invitations to come to their home. Some laid blame at his door, saying he misled them into thinking they were taking part in consensual kink.

News from © The Associated Press, 2024