A judge in France found Gisèle Pelicot’s former husband on Thursday approved to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of nearly a decade and encouraging dozens of other men to also attack her because they were guilty of aggravated rape. Forty-nine men who Dominique Pelicot brought into his home to attack his wife were also convicted Thursday at the same landmark trial.

The man convicted of orchestrating the ongoing attacks over the years received the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, while his co-defendants were given sentences of between three and 15 years.

During the trial, Gisèle Pelicot demanded that her full name and the court be published Proceedings are made public – was praised for her courage and became a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France and around the world.

“I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the people who supported me during this difficult time. Your testimony, your statements really moved me and gave me the strength to come back every day during these long days. “The trial is ending,” Pelicot told reporters outside the court on Thursday.

“I wanted to open the doors of this process last September so that society could see what was happening. I will never regret this decision. “I have confidence in our ability to find together a better future where men and women alike can live together harmlessly and with mutual respect,” she said.

At his invitation, Roger Arata, the senior judge at the court in Avignon, southeastern France, read out the verdicts for Dominique Pelicot and the 49 other men convicted of raping his former wife in her own bed. Another man was accused of aggravated sexual assault. All men were found guilty, but one had his conviction reduced from rape to sexual assault and two had their sentences suspended.

“The children are disappointed with these low sentences,” one of Pelicot’s family members, who did not want to be named, told French news agency AFP.

When Pelicot arrived in court Thursday, she was greeted by crowds holding signs with slogans like “Thank you for your courage.” She and her daughters sat in the courtroom with their heads leaning against the wall as the verdicts were read, CBS News affiliate network BBC News reported.

The trial began on September 2nd and Pelicot faced her almost every day former husbandDominique or any of the 50 other men charged with assaulting her. She insisted that videos submitted as evidence made by her ex-husband showing men attacking her while she appeared to be unconscious were shown in court.

Her ex-husband was also found guilty of attempted aggravated rape of a woman called Cillia, the wife of another man, Jean Pierre Marechal, who was one of the co-accused, and of taking indecent images of his daughter Caroline. and his daughters-in-law Celine and Aurore, BBC News reported. According to the BBC, he showed no emotion during the reading of the verdicts in court. After the verdict and sentencing, his lawyer said he had ten days to file an appeal, which he was considering.

What happened to Gisèle Pelicot?

The attacks occurred between 2011 and 2020, when Dominique Pelicot was taken into custody. Police found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse on his computer drives, which led them to other suspects. Some of the men told the court they believed the unconscious woman agreed or that her husband’s permission was enough.

During the trial, 72-year-old Gisèle Pelicot spoke in court about how she had believed she had a loving marriage with her husband and never suspected what was happening.

“We drank a glass of white wine together. “I never found anything strange about my potatoes,” Pelicot told the court. “We have finished eating. When there’s a football game on TV, I often let him watch alone. He is a love.’”

She said she never knew he was drugging her with the snacks.

“I never felt my heart fluttering. I didn’t feel anything. I must have gone down very quickly. “I always woke up in my pajamas,” Pelicot told the court, adding that she sometimes woke up “more tired than usual,” but I run a lot and thought that was it.

“I’m trying to understand,” she said, “how this husband, who was the perfect man, could have come to this.”

Her then-husband recruited the other men to come through online chat rooms and attack his wife. The 50 other men charged in the case come from all walks of life and professions and most were residents of the area.

“It’s not our job to be ashamed – it’s their job,” Pelicot said during the trial, referring to the attackers. “Above all, I express my will and determination to change this society.”

Pelicot continued to attend hearings throughout the trial, in part because she “felt that she was somehow representing the victims of this type of abuse,” her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau said before Thursday’s verdict. “There are a lot of victims who stand in court, face their attackers with no one outside, line up for them and offer them flowers. That’s why she felt like she had to continue to stay focused because it wasn’t her choice, she felt like she was somehow representing the victims, and she felt responsible for that.

Controversial French laws

Pelicot’s case sparked protests across France, with some protesters hoping the case could lead to changes to France’s controversial sexual consent laws.

France introduced a legal age of sexual consent in 2021 after public outcry over the rape of an 11-year-old student by a man who was originally convicted of a lesser charge. Since then, sex with anyone under 15 has been considered non-consensual, but French law does not require consent for older victims.

French law defines rape as penetration or oral sex using “force, coercion, threat or surprise” without taking consent into account, according to Reuters news agency. Prosecutors must therefore prove an intent to rape to succeed in court, legal experts told Reuters.

According to a study by the Institute of Public Policies, only 14% of rape allegations in France result in formal investigations.

“Why can’t we get convictions? The first reason is the law,” French legal expert Catherine Le Magueresse told Reuters. “The law is written in such a way that victims must conform to the stereotype of a ‘good victim’ and a ‘real rape’: an unknown assailant, use of force and the victim’s resistance. But that only applies to a minority of rape cases.”

Frank Andrews contributed to this report.