AVIGNON: In a drugging-and-rape case that shocked the globe and made the victim, Gisele Pelicot, a powerful symbol of bravery and tenacity, a French court found all 51 defendants guilty on Thursday.
Dominique Pelicot, Pelicot’s 50-year ex-husband, had entered a guilty plea to drugging her regularly for nearly ten years in order to rape her and offer her unconscious body for sex to hundreds of strangers he had met online, all the while recording the torture.
Prosecutors asked a panel of five judges to condemn him to the maximum of 20 years in prison.
For the other defendants, nearly all of whom were charged with raping the unconscious Gisele, the court awarded sentences that were generally shorter than the four to eighteen years that the prosecution had asked.
