The main accused in the trial of a decade of rapes in France, Dominique Pelicot, was again excused from hearing, for the third consecutive day, before a medical examination during the day, explained the president of the court.
It is only after this expert assessment that Roger Arata, the president of the criminal court of Vaucluse in Avignon in the south of France, will decide on the continuation of the trial and a possible suspension of several days, the time for Mr. Pelicot, the victim’s ex-husband, to recover his health.
“I am ordering an expert report, I will sign the order in the morning and […] “I am dispensing Mr. Pelicot for the day,” announced the president of the court.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, who was initially due to be questioned on Tuesday afternoon, could now be heard on Thursday afternoon, “depending on his state of health”, the magistrate said.
The accused had arrived in his box on Wednesday morning with the help of his cane, because he suffers from hip problems, wearing a long-sleeved grey jacket. He appeared very weak, his facial features extremely drawn, holding his head in his hands.
The eighth day of the hearing in this extraordinary trial, in which Mr Pelicot and 50 other men, aged 26 to 74, are being tried in Avignon, will therefore continue without the septuagenarian who has been suffering from intestinal pain since last weekend.
Dominique Pelicot is accused of drugging his wife with anxiolytics and then raping her and having her raped by dozens of strangers he recruited on the Internet, over a period of ten years, from July 2011 to October 2020, mainly at the couple’s home in Mazan, a town of 6,000 inhabitants in Vaucluse where they had moved in March 2013.