FATHER BAGS SEVEN YEAR JAIL TERM OVER RAPE OF TEENAGE DAUGHTER IN FRANCE

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A man who abused his adolescent daughter for years and offered her up for sex with strangers was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a court in southeast France on Friday.

In a case that has rocked the country, 51 men are accused of raping Gisele Pelicot after her husband sedated her so he could bring others to their home and torture her.

The court in the southeast Var area found the 38-year-old father guilty of coercing his daughter into having sex with him starting when she was 13.

Estelle Bois, the prosecutor, explained how the father had complete authority over the small child, who was his adopted daughter.

Additionally, he introduced her to other guys he had contacted through internet classified advertising, many of whom were considerably older.

Both he and his daughter were consenting adults pursuing a sexual dream, the father told the other men. However, in accordance with the prosecution’s demands, he was found guilty and given a maximum term of 20 years in prison.

According to some of the defendants in the Pelicot case, Dominique Pelicot, the victim’s ex-husband, gave them the same notion.

Similar to Dominique Pelicot, the father in Friday’s case supervised, took part in, and recorded his daughter’s sex actions while she was wearing a blindfold.

He admitted to the accusations, but claimed in court that he had a loving relationship with the young girl and had responded to her initiating sexual contact.

“This is not about love, but about power and domination. He doesn’t love (his daughter), he loves having total control over her, her belonging to him, her obeying him,” prosecutor Bois said.

She also asked judges to jail for 16 years a second defendant, the only one of the other men to have abused the girl who could be identified.

As in the Pelicot case, the second defendant — a man his 60s with six children — was identified thanks to the photo and video documentation by the father of the abuse, this time via geolocation data.

The second defendant told the court that he had been taken in by the father’s claim that the girl was consenting in three of his four meetings with them.

In the fourth, “things went badly. Rather than acting like a responsible man, he followed through on his own pleasure and closed his eyes” to the abuse, his lawyer Christophe Mairet said.

Now aged 18, the girl was accompanied in court by a golden retriever trained to comfort victims of abuse.

She had, like Gisele Pelicot, declined the option of the trial being held behind closed doors.

It was the teenager, then aged 15, who put a stop to her own abuse in 2021 by fleeing after her father’s violence and humiliation escalated.

She ran from their home in Cavalaire-sur-mer, south of glitzy resort town Saint-Tropez, before being brought to police by a holidaymaker.

Her father had bombarded her phone with calls and texts throughout her escape.

AFP