Dozens of men including the former husband of Gisele Pelicot found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting her in a historical test that shocked France.
Addressing a cheering crowd in the southern city of Avignon after the verdicts were read, Pelicot72, that the outcome of her case gave her faith in a future where “all people, women, men can live together in harmony, in mutual respect and understanding.”
Pelicot, who has become a hero to many in France for choosing to give up her right to anonymity and the crimes her husband orchestrated, said she was defeated to fight with her children and grandchildren in memory “because they are the future,” according to a live translation by NBC News' British broadcast partner Sky News.
Earlier in the courtroom, she watched as Roger Arata, the chief judge, sentenced her husband Dominique Pelicot to 20 years in prison. He had earlier admitted that she drugged her until she found out and invited dozens of men to rape her over ten years.
Gisèle Pelicot speaks to the media after her husband was sentenced on Thursday, December 19.
According to Sky News, a further 46 men were found guilty of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault in the high-profile case. They were between 26 and 74 in age and received sentences ranging from three to 13 years. Together they will serve more than 400 years.
Arod 15 had accepted the facts, although very few of the accused men showed remorse before making decisions.
Pelicot said she respected the court and its decisions.
In a side room, family members of the defendants watched the proceedings unfold on television screens, some bursting into tears and gasping as the sentences were announced, said The Associated Press.
With emotions running high, around 200 police officers were expected to be deployed in and around the courthouse, packed with family members of the accused, onlookers and journalists from around the world. world More than 150 journalists were accredited to cover the trial, which many activists see as a watershed moment. for women's rights in France.
In an earlier hearing, it was revealed that Pelicot only learned of the horrors she suffered when police began investigating her husband after a security guard caught him filming up women's skirts. his smartphone.
Investigators said they found videos on her husband's devices that showed she herself had been the victim of a serious crime.
A woman holds a placard reading in French “every woman on earth supports you, thank you Gisele” as people gather outside the Avignon courthouse on December 19, 2024 .
While she could have remained anonymous, she requested that the trial be held in public and asked her lawyers to fight for a video harrowing and other evidence to be played in open court.
She said she was doing this in an effort to stop the “macho, patriarchal society that perpetuates rape.”
Campaigners against sexual violence had hoped that Pelicot's case would represent a turning point in the fight against rape culture and the difficulties that sexual assault survivors often face in coming to terms with get justice
And in France, some of them told NBC News earlier this week, that they hoped to transform a society in which 75% of women said they believe they are not treated equally in 2024 government survey and where last year, 230,000 women report that they were victims of sexual violence.
“We have a serious problem with French law,” said Magali Lafourcade, France's general secretary National Consultative Commission on Human Rights. “There are a large number of situations that are not rape under French law (but) are rape in the eyes of the victim.”
This story appeared first NBCNews.com.
This article was originally published on TODAY.com
