OT: The trial of Dominique Pelicot (rapist)

[Louis Epstein]

Too bad alt.true-crime isn't listed among the newsgroups; I would have
posted this there.

Listed where?
Attempting to cross-post.

Anyway, I was overwhelmed by Gisèle Pelicot's determination - especially
regarding her insistence on showing the awful videos in court.
"Dominique Pelicot's double life: Who is the man who plotted his wife's
mass rape?"
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clynx2q93q1o
..A measured and eloquent expert witness, Dr Layet stressed that
Pelicot exhibited no signs of severe mental illness. He could not be
dismissed as a "monster". Nor was he psychotic - unable to tell reality
from fiction...
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20241127-pelicot-trial-there-s-no-such-thing-as-ordinary-accidental-involuntary-rape
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/19/world/europe/pelicot-rape-trial-guilty-verdict.html
..Many offered stunning explanations to the court, qualifying their
acts as “involuntary rape,” “nonconsenting rape,” “accidental rape” or
“rape by body but not mind.”...
______________________________________________
(The videos, of course, made it clear she was unconscious. Trouble is,
from what I've heard, an awful lot of men in France - and in the USA -
truly believe that unconscious women are fair game, even when we're NOT
talking about bizarre cases like this.)
Anyway, those quoted passages remind me of how some people still try to
argue that only "monsters" commit rape.
Elsewhere, years ago, I said that that's like arguing that only
teenagers who are monsters ever drink and drive and kill people. Most of
those teen killers do it because they just don't CARE what might happen;
they are, in other words, ordinary teens who need much closer
supervision. (Also, many - most? - of them were first-time killers, to
be blunt.)
In the same vein, regarding acquaintance rape, many young rapists, at
least, truly believe that if he paid for her dinner, or she changed her
mind, or they had consensual sex the day before, she has no right to say
no. They truly don't understand why they're being arrested. It was just
a "misunderstanding" in their minds.
And...most convicted SERIAL rapists - such as Pelicot - are not insane
or mentally ill. (Obviously, if they were, we'd be hearing more about
that.)
So what does that say about the man who forces a crying, struggling
woman into sex "only" once in a lifetime?

Are the kinds of rapist different from the kinds of murderer?

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Lenona]

Post by Louis Epstein

Too bad alt.true-crime isn't listed among the newsgroups; I would have
posted this there.

Listed where?
Attempting to cross-post.

What I meant was, novabbs.org doesn't include it.

And when I googled, it only appeared under Google Groups. That suggests
it's been renamed - or it's no longer extant.

Post by Louis Epstein
Are the kinds of rapist different from the kinds of murderer?

Depends on just what you're asking. Analogy-wise, I was referring only
to those killers who drive drunk. (I don't speak legalese, but I assume
that even those particular convicted killers don't get called
"murderers," per se.)

As I hinted, it's the YOUNG rapists and young drunk-driving killers who
are "different" from the older ones. That is, they don't "know" what
they're doing - but only because they CHOOSE to delude themselves that
the law doesn't apply to them. (As in: "I drive better when I've had a
few drinks, so the law should stop lying about that." Of course, that's
a common delusion among teen drivers. So is the attitude - especially
among teen boys - that there's no such thing as unwanted sex, and that
therefore, acquaintance rape laws are bogus.)

By comparison, SERIAL rapists and serial drunk drivers/killers tend to
be older, hardened, and remorseless. Like Dominique Pelicot.

(I have never seen a serial drunk driver break down in court, on TV, no
matter how high the body count is by then. It's the YOUNG
drivers/killers who are in tears - and who, one hopes, will never drive
drunk again. Like Jamie Lee Komoroski, who, at 25 or 26, killed the
newlywed bride Samantha Miller in 2023. She got 25 years. But an awful
lot of people are saying her tears were just crocodile tears.)

The bottom line is: over-18, first-time felons should not be getting the
lightweight sentences that, say, 14-year-olds might get. It's just that
SERIAL felons - who, again, are often older - need to have even harsher
sentences than non-serial felons.

[Louis Epstein]

Post by Lenona

Post by Louis Epstein

Too bad alt.true-crime isn't listed among the newsgroups; I would have
posted this there.

Listed where?
Attempting to cross-post.

What I meant was, novabbs.org doesn't include it.
And when I googled, it only appeared under Google Groups. That suggests
it's been renamed - or it's no longer extant.

Well,my header shows this message as cross-posted to
alt.obituaries and alt.true-crime.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.

[Lenona]

Post by Louis Epstein
Well,my header shows this message as cross-posted to
alt.obituaries and alt.true-crime.

My original post doesn't show that. I have never tried to cross-post
ANYTHING; I understand it's bad manners. If I want to post something
twice, I make two posts.

[Louis Epstein]

Post by Lenona

Post by Louis Epstein
Well,my header shows this message as cross-posted to
alt.obituaries and alt.true-crime.

My original post doesn't show that. I have never tried to cross-post
ANYTHING; I understand it's bad manners. If I want to post something
twice, I make two posts.

I consider it preferable to cross-post as this uses
less disk space on servers.(I used to have my own
news server and know how easily that space is used
up).There's a reason that clogging news feeds/disks
with multiple copies of a message is outright "spam",
while crossposts are merely "velveeta".

Just as with my making sure my signoff CAN be quoted back
at me by anyone who cares to comment on it,despite an
institutional bias against this.

-=-=-
The World Trade Center towers MUST rise again,
at least as tall as before...or terror has triumphed.