Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman whose ex-husband was jailed for 20 years for orchestrating and committing mass rapes against her with dozens of strangers, has no fear of a new trial if defendants appeal, her lawyer said Friday.
Gisèle Pelicot, 72, has been hailed as a hero and feminist icon for her courage and dignity in the three-month trial that ended Thursday with all 51 defendants, including her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot, being convicted.
But after she described the process as a "difficult ordeal" she risks having to go through another trial with two defendants already lodging an appeal and the lawyer of her ex-husband not ruling out doing the same.
"In any case, she is not afraid of it. If it were to happen, she has already indicated to us that she would face it – if she is healthy, obviously, since she is a lady who is now 72," Stéphane Babonneau, one of her lawyers, told France Inter radio.
"But in any case, she has no fear of it, that is what she told us."
Read morePelicot mass rape trial: Feminist groups feel 'humiliated', defence accepts verdicts
Asked about his client's state of mind, Babonneau replied that "she was very happy to go home. She is very relieved".
"What she doesn't want is for other victims to think 'this lady has extraordinary strength, I couldn't do that'", he said.
"She doesn't want to be seen as an icon. She doesn't want to be seen as someone extraordinary. And in reality, she is someone who remains very simple and who has decided to try to live her life in the most normal way", he added.
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Dominique Pelicot, who had confessed to the crimes, was found guilty by the court in the southern city of Avignon and sentenced to the maximum of 20 years in prison.
For almost a decade, Dominique Pelicot had recruited strangers online and invited them to the family home to rape Gisèle Pelicot, who had been heavily drugged with sleeping pills. He also took videos of the rapes and took meticulous records, which were used as evidence in the trial.
Dozens of other defendants – the men who visited the Pelicot family home to rape Gisèle Pelicot as she lay unconscious after being drugged by her husband – were handed terms of between three and 15 years.
(AFP)