Five unanswered questions from the trial

Rape survivor Giselle Bellico walked out of a court in southern France for the final time on Thursday after her ex-husband was sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging and raping her and inviting dozens of strangers to assault her over a period of nearly a decade.

A judge in Avignon convicted Dominique Bellicot, 72, of all charges. He was on trial with 50 other men, all of whom were convicted of at least one charge, although their prison terms were shorter than prosecutors had sought.

Although the trial is over, there are still lingering questions about the Bellicot case and what will happen next.

When I walked up the steps of the Avignon courthouse for the first time in September, no one knew Giselle Bellico's name. Over the next 15 weeks, her reputation as a rape victim who refused to be ashamed of what happened to her grew dizzyingly.

By the time I left the court ThursdayCrowds of hundreds were chanting her name and her picture made the front pages of newspapers around the world.

She is now perhaps one of the most famous women in France. This means that even though she has changed her name, it will be impossible for her to return to the anonymity that served her so well when she tried to rebuild her life after her husband's crimes were revealed.

Gisele is not the first woman whose unimaginable suffering has turned her into an icon. At great personal cost, she became a symbol of the fight she never chose. It seems unlikely, then, that she would want to become an outspoken campaigner against sexual violence, or a prominent feminist figure. Instead, she might return to what she said has always given her solace: music, long walks, chocolate — and her seven grandchildren.

“At the beginning of the trial she said: ‘If I last two weeks, it will be too much.’” “In the end, it reached three and a half months,” said her lawyer, Stefan Babonneau. “Now, she is at peace, and feels relieved that it is all over.”

Days after Dominique Bellicot's crimes came to light, his daughter, Caroline Darian, was called to the police station and shown photos of a woman who appeared unconscious and wearing unfamiliar underwear. She later said her life “stopped” when she realized she was looking at her photos.

Her father has always denied touching her, but Caroline – whose anguish and devastation has emerged in numerous court hearings – said she would never believe him and accused him of looking at her with “incestuous eyes”.

But the lack of evidence of the abuse Caroline was convinced she had suffered led her to argue that she was the “forgotten victim” at trial. This idea clearly seeped into her relationship with her mother. In her memoirs – published after her father's arrest – she accused Giselle of not showing enough support for her, and implicitly choosing to side with her rapist ex-husband against her daughter.

Although Giselle and her children always sat next to each other in court, often whispering to each other, there are signs of the toll the trial has taken on their relationship.

On Friday, Caroline's brother, David, confirmed, as he has done before, that the trial was not just about Giselle, but about their entire “exterminated family.”

“We children felt forgotten,” he said. “Quite frankly, I feel like even though our attorneys did a great job defending our mother, we were kind of not taken into consideration.”

In her memoirs, Caroline lamented Giselle's “denial as a coping mechanism.”

“Because of my father, I am now losing my mother,” she wrote.

With the exception of Dominique, all of the defendants' prison sentences were less than what prosecutors sought.

Many defense lawyers were clearly satisfied, meaning they were unlikely to encourage their clients to appeal their sentences. A man named Jean-Pierre Maréchal was sentenced to 12 years in prison, five years less than what the prosecution requested, and his lawyer, Patrick Gontard, told the BBC that it was “out of the question” that he would appeal the sentence.

The months or years the men spent on remand will count toward their total sentences, meaning some of them could be released sooner if they have served the minimum term.

A man who was facing a 17-year prison sentence ended up being sentenced to eight years in prison, and his lawyer Roland Marmelot told the BBC that because he had already spent several years in prison, he was likely to be released relatively soon.

However, by the morning after the trial concluded, two men sentenced to eight years in prison had already appealed. More are expected to follow over the next 10 days – the time period within which appeals can be filed.

Dominique Bellicot admitted assaulting and attempting to rape a 23-year-old estate agent, known by the alias Marion, on the outskirts of Paris in 1999. An ether-soaked cloth was placed over her mouth but she managed to fight off the attacker. Off and running. Only in 2021, after he was arrested for the crimes he committed against his wife Giselle, Bellicot's DNA was tested along with a blood stain found on Marion's shoe, and he admitted his guilt.

However, he has denied any responsibility in another cold case – the rape and murder of another young real estate agent, Sophie Narmi, in 1991, for which there is no DNA. Investigators argued that the two cases contained too many similarities to be considered a mere coincidence.

Other cold cases in which similar modes of action have been used are also considered again.

“There will be a pre-trial, and there will be a post-trial,” a Parisian man told the BBC in the first days of the trial.

For many, these feelings have heightened over the past few months, as intense media coverage of Pellicott's trial has led to countless discussions about rape, consent, and sexual violence.

“What we need to do is issue much harsher sentences,” Mazan residents Nicola and Mahdi told the BBC. They said they were “disgusted” when they discovered that one of the accused was a man they played football with.

“With longer sentences, they will at least think twice before doing things like this,” they said, adding that it was “insanely unfair” that some men would be released from prison in the next few months.

However, it should be noted that the risk of a 20-year prison sentence for aggravated rape did not prevent Dominique Bellicot from subjecting his unconscious wife to rape by strangers he met online.

There have been calls to reform French rape legislation to include consent, but this has faltered in the past and will require a great deal of work in the current divided French parliament.

Some have argued that schools have a responsibility to better teach new generations about sex, love and consent. Beatriz Zavaro, Dominic Bellico's lawyer, said she believes “change will not come from the Department of Justice but from the Department of Education.”

Françoise, a resident of the area where Giselle and Dominique Bellicot lived, told the BBC she believes a way must be found to bridge the gap between what children learn in schools and the type of material they can access online.

She added: “Young people are very exposed to online sex, and at the same time schools are very wise.” “They have to be more open and honest to match and explain what children see.”

What these exchanges show is that although it will take some time before any changes become tangible, the conversation is starting now. It will continue until there are no more unanswered questions.