5 unanswered questions from the trial

French rape victim Gisele Pericot was sentenced Thursday by a court in the south of France after her ex-husband was jailed for 20 years for drugging and rape, accusing him of luring dozens of strangers to abuse him over nearly a decade. He finally appeared in court.

Dominique Perico, 72, was found guilty on all charges by a judge in Avignon. He was on trial along with 50 others, and all were found guilty on at least one charge, but their prison sentences were shorter than prosecutors had requested.

Although the trial is over, questions remain about the Pericot case and what will happen next.

When she first climbed the steps of the Court of Avignon in September, no one knew Gisele Pericot’s name. Over the next 15 weeks, her fame as a rape victim who refused to be ashamed of what had been done to her grew dizzyingly.

By the time she left court on Thursday, a crowd of several hundred people were chanting her name and her photo was on the front pages of newspapers around the world.

She is currently probably one of the most famous women in France. This means that even though she has stopped using her husband’s last name, it is impossible for her to return to the anonymity that helped her so much in trying to rebuild her life after her husband’s crimes were revealed. means.

Gisele is not the first person whose unimaginable suffering has turned her into an icon. At great personal cost, she became a symbol of a battle she never chose. So it seems unlikely that she would want to become an outspoken activist against gender violence or a prominent feminist figure. Instead, she may return to the things she said have always comforted her: music, long walks, chocolate and her seven grandchildren.

“At the beginning of the trial she said, ‘If it lasts two weeks, that’s a big deal.’ In the end, she survived for three and a half months,” said her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau. “Now she is at peace and relieved that everything is over.”

Days after Dominic Perico’s crimes were revealed, his daughter, Caroline Darian, was called to a police station and shown a photo of an apparently unconscious woman wearing unfamiliar lingerie. Later, she said her life “stopped” when she realized she was looking at photos of herself.

Her father has always denied ever touching her, but although Caroline’s anguish and devastation have been revealed in numerous courtrooms, he says he will never believe her and that Caroline has described him as “an incestuous child.” He accused her of looking at him with “different eyes.”

But she claims she is the “forgotten victim” of the trial due to a lack of evidence of the abuse she believes was inflicted on her. That idea visibly pervades his relationship with his mother. In a memoir published after her father’s arrest, she accused Gisele of not showing enough support and implicitly choosing to side with her rapist ex-husband over her daughter.

Although Gisele and her children regularly sat next to each other in court and often huddled together to whisper, there were signs that the trial was taking a toll on their relationship.

On Friday, Caroline’s brother David stressed, as always, that the trial was not just about Gisele, but their entire “annihilated family”.

“We kids felt forgotten,” he says. “Honestly, our attorneys did a great job defending our mother, but we feel like we were a little bit under-considered.”

In her memoir, Caroline lamented Gisele’s “denial as a coping mechanism.”

“Because of my father, I am now losing my mother,” she wrote.

With the exception of Dominique, all of the defendants were sentenced to less prison time than the prosecution sought.

Several defense lawyers are clearly satisfied, meaning they are unlikely to encourage their clients to appeal the verdict. The man, Jean-Pierre Maréchal, was sentenced to 12 years in prison, five years less than prosecutors had sought, and his lawyer Patrick Gontar told the BBC that it was “out of the question” for him to appeal. Ta.

The months or years the men spent in pretrial detention count toward their total sentences, so some could be released immediately if they serve their minimum sentences.

A man who had been sentenced to 17 years in prison ended up being sentenced to eight years in prison, and his lawyer Rolando Marmillo told the BBC that he had already spent several years in prison and could be released relatively quickly. He said that there is a high possibility that

Still, by the morning after the trial ended, two men each sentenced to eight years in prison had already filed an appeal. More cases are expected to follow over the next 10 days, the period during which appeals will be filed.

Dominique Perico admitted to assaulting and attempting to rape a 23-year-old real estate agent, known by the pseudonym Marion, in a Paris suburb in 1999. A cloth soaked in ether was placed over her mouth, but she managed to fight off her attackers. And he ran away. It wasn’t until 2021, after Pericot’s DNA was matched to bloodstains found on Marion’s shoes, that Pericot admitted to the crime, after he was arrested for the crimes he committed against his wife, Gisele.

But he denies responsibility in another unsolved case, the 1991 rape and murder of another young real estate agent, Sophie Narme, for which no DNA exists. Investigators say the two cases have too many similarities to be coincidental.

Other cold cases in which similar legal methods were used are also being re-examined.

“There is a ‘before’ and an ‘after’ in the Perico trial,” a Paris resident told the BBC early in the trial.

For many, this feeling has only heightened in recent months, when intensive media coverage of the Pericot trial sparked countless discussions about rape, consent, and gender violence.

“What we need to do is give much harsher punishments,” Nicolas and Mehdi, residents of Mazan, the village where the Pericots lived, told the BBC. They said they were “disgusted” when they learned one of the defendants was a man they had played football with.

“Longer sentences would at least make people think twice before doing something like this,” they said, adding that the possibility that some of the men could be released from prison in the coming months was “grossly unfortunate.” It’s fair,” he added.

But the risk of 20 years in prison for aggravated rape didn’t deter Dominic Perrico from offering to strangers he met online to rape his unconscious wife. Worth noting.

Some have called for France’s rape laws to be changed to include consent, but so far they have stalled and would require significant effort in France’s currently divided parliament.

Some argue that schools have a responsibility to better teach new generations about sex, love and consent. Dominic Perrico’s lawyer, Beatriz Zabarro, said she believes “change will come from the Department of Education, not the Department of Justice.”

Françoise, a resident of the area where Gisele and Dominique Pericot once lived, says we need to find a way to bridge the gap between what children are taught in school and the types of materials they can access online. He told the BBC he was thinking about it.

“Young people are very exposed to sexual activity on the internet, and at the same time schools are very sensible,” she says. “We need to be more open and honest in explaining what kids are seeing.”

These interactions show that while it will take time for change to become visible, the conversation has already begun. This continues until there are no unanswered questions.