Jacques C., 72 years old, small man, round belly prominent under short-sleeved shirt, full white hair and beard. Twenty-five years married, two children, former fireman, truck driver, tour operator, pizzeria owner. Those close to him describe him as “kind,” “attentive,” “open to others.” After a religious upbringing, he has retained a sense of “giving of oneself” and, now that he has retired, he “tries to do good around [him].” “I have a deep respect for women,” Jacques C. insisted. “If my ex-wife were here, she’d say: ‘He loves the woman, in all her diversity, all her complexity’.”
“How can you reconcile this statement with the facts for which you are appearing, namely the rape of an unconscious woman?” asked Stéphane Babonneau, Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer, on Thursday, September 19.
The criminal court in southern France embarked on a new phase of the trial: the examination of the cases of the 49 co-defendants, other than Dominique Pelicot, on trial for abusing his wife after he had previously drugged her. A 50th is on trial for abusing his own wife in a copycat manner. At a rate of five, six or seven defendants a week, the court will emerge from this tunnel at the beginning of November.
Dominique Pelicot and Jacques C. met on Coco.fr, a libertine dating site. “My wife takes a sleeping pill in the evening and, when she’s asleep, I have men over,” Dominique Pelicot wrote to Jacques C. one day. That same evening, Jacques C. went to Dominique Pelicot’s house in the town of Mazan, near Avignon in southern France.
Here are some of the things he said on the stand on Thursday: “I had the idea of a libertine couple whose wife would be asleep, maybe she was shy”; “When he took me into the bedroom, I felt that things were not as I thought they were going to be”; “I was a little light, I didn’t ask any questions”; “I was a million miles from imagining that a man could do this kind of practice with the mother of his children”; “I was naive, and I thought that at some point, Madame Pelicot would wake up”; “Another important thing, age: I trust someone over 60”; “I realized that, potentially, I was abusing her, but I was a little slow on the uptake.”
Shroud of silence and unease
Jacques C. is accused of having raped Gisèle Pelicot by means of finger penetration and of having filmed a fellatio that Dominique Pelicot imposed on his sleeping wife, which would make him the co-author of this rape.
Jacques C. admitted only to touching, caressing and cunnilingus “without the tongue,” as tongue penetration would be considered rape. The court president, Roger Arata, had warned that if the case was contested, the relevant images would be broadcast. So the court entered the Pelicot home on Thursday for the first time.
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