Pelicot’s attitude towards his family in court was often revealing. The psychiatrist, Dr Layet, pointed out that the accused narcissistically focused on the love his wife and children once felt for him, not his betrayal of their trust.
For Pelicot, this “started out as a love story” and he “doesn’t want this to be ignored”, said Dr Layet.
But Ms Rault had come to court to look for other signs. Above all, she wanted to shore up her sense that Pelicot’s crimes were highly premeditated.
“Serial rapists… usually have an impulse. They commit rape. They leave, and then they forget. This is not the case with [Pelicot] at all,” she said.
Ms Rault recalled the methodical actions of Marion’s attacker inside an estate agent’s office in 1999. The way he had made an excuse to return to his car – almost certainly to collect a rope and a bottle of ether to drug her. Then Ms Rault noted that the man in the glass cage in Avignon demonstrated a similar self-possession and saw it as further evidence that this was a deeply calculating criminal.
“When he says he has urges and acts on impulse, it’s nothing like that. He is very calm.”
On the same day that Ms Rault was in the Avignon courtroom, I was sitting nearby. Gisele Pelicot was a few metres to our right. Dozens of the accused sat in front of us. Dominique Pelicot was over to the left side of the room.
During a break in proceedings, I walked over to him. According to French law, journalists are not allowed to talk to the accused. Instead, I stood for a while and watched him as he sat in his chair, behind his glass wall, one hand on his stick. Then his head turned towards me, and he held my gaze for what must have been 20 seconds – although it felt much longer.
His expression did not change. He did not seem to blink. And then, like a bored man switching between equally boring television channels, he looked away.
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