François Amic believes that the defendants he examined would not have gone to the Pelicot couple’s home if they had known that the victim was drugged. For him, they were inevitably manipulated by the septuagenarian, whom he describes as a “multi-card pervert”.
“Don’t you give the impression of having been manipulated by certain defendants?” asks Antoine Camus. The afternoon is already well underway, Monday October 7, when Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer examines François Amic, the expert psychiatrist who has come to report on the examination of the five accused whose profiles are being studied this week in Avignon by the criminal court of Vaucluse.
Throughout this 23rd day of hearing at the Mazan rape trial, the latter relayed a position that was explosive to say the least: he believes that the men he examined (ten accused in total) were all more or less manipulated by Dominique Pelicot, supporting the main thesis of the defense. The vast majority of the 50 accused in fact assure that the septuagenarian duped them, promising them a “libertine scenario” on the Coco.fr website, before realizing, once there, that the situation was completely different. Indulging in sexual acts on the unconscious Gisèle Pelicot.
“In this type of relationship with the expert, there is always a possibility of manipulation. But I believe what I wrote: elements lead me to suppose that Mr. A. was in an altered state of consciousness”answers François Amic to Antoine Camus’ question. “Mr. A.”, it is Patrick A., 60 years old, who presents a singular profile in the cohort of accused: the man declares himself homosexual and claims to have come to have a sexual relationship with Dominique Pelicot. He believes he was drugged by the latter, claiming not to remember all of the facts, namely: penetrations and attempts at penetration by him on the victim and several sexual acts with Dominique Pelicot.
The psychiatrist agrees with the sixty-year-old, declaring on the stand that his theory “is not verifiable, but plausible”. His partial amnesia of the facts could be linked “taking benzodiazepines”, advances François Amic, recalling that Dominique Pelicot administered Temesta to his wife, the anxiolytic being part of this family of drugs prescribed to combat anxiety and insomnia.
“Do you know of a molecule capable of causing amnesic effects selectively?”
Antoine Camus, lawyer for Gisèle Pelicotbefore the Vaucluse criminal court
“I know a lot of amnestic products: it depends on the molecule and the dosage used”retorts the expert psychiatrist.
Its conclusions could have very important consequences since, according to article 122-1 of the Penal Code, the accused would benefit from a slight impairment of his judgment – having been under the influence of toxic substances – resulting in a reduction of his sentence. For this reason, the investigating judge requested a second opinion for Patrick A., carried out by another psychiatrist, Olivia Ple, who brought radically different conclusions.
This, heard this Monday by videoconference, estimates that the sixty-year-old has “normal intelligence, without intellectual deficit” and think he “was aware of what he was doing, and knowingly ignored it to obtain sexual intercourse with Mr. Pelicot”. The interested party having notably admitted to the expert: “I wanted to have a relationship with him so much that I did anything.”
Olivia Ple also assures that she did not detect “no signs of manipulation” from Dominique Pelicot on Patrick A. For his colleague François Amic, it appears obvious, however, that the man was indeed fooled by the main accused, “because he came for a homosexual relationship and he commits a deviant act on the wife, even though he has no history of this type”.
The psychiatrist reached the same conclusion for another accused: Didier S., 68 years old, who also told Dominique Pelicot of his homosexuality, also finding himself performing sexual acts on Gisèle Pelicot. The alleged facts date back to January 2019: five years before, the accused had undergone removal of his bladder and prostate due to cancer. Since then, this father of two children, who previously defined himself as heterosexual, says he has “a replacement sexuality and was looking for male partners”related the expert.
“At the end of his examination, I want to affirm that Mr. S. did not intend to rape.”
François Amic, psychiatristbefore the Vaucluse criminal court
And the expert asserts: “Mr. Pelicot did not tell anyone that his wife was drugged”, which the person concerned strongly denies. His lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, also recalls that “15 of the 50 accused consider themselves not to have been manipulated” by his client. In fact, several of them claim to have been aware from the start of the victim’s state of unconsciousness.
The expert does not hesitate to put forward hypotheses about the personality of Dominique Pelicot, who seems to fascinate him, describing him as “multi-card pervert”, even though he did not assess it. “People organized in a perverse way, which seems to be the case of Mr. Pelicot, can manipulate a lifetime, especially rapists”he affirms without hesitation.
The defense is jubilant. “Your expert report has caused a lot of ink to flow, because you dared, oh crime of lèse-majesté, to invoke the fact that the person you examined had been manipulated by a personality who you have been accused of n ‘have never seen’, observes Stéphane Simonin, the lawyer for another accused, who appears detained for having gone twice to the home of the Pelicot couple. “I have known you for fourteen years and you have never been in favor of the defense”, adds her colleague, Nadia El Bouroumi, who represents another man whose profile is being studied this week.
“But since that doesn’t satisfy the civil party, we’re trying to discredit you.”
Nadia El Bouroumi, lawyerbefore the Vaucluse criminal court
Questioned by the latter, François Amic reaffirms his position: “I could not believe that Mr. Pelicot informed his supposed accomplices that his wife was drugged, otherwise he would not have had the extraordinary success that he had, with such a large number of co-defendants.” For the psychiatrist, the men tried in this trial “do not have a sufficiently significant intellectual disability to not know the consequences of having sexual relations without the consent of their partner”. As if understanding the notion of consent had to do with the level of intelligence.