Mr. Babano knew that without those videos, “most likely, there would be no trial, no case.”
Mrs. Pellicott understood this as well, but could easily and understandably have decided, for her own sanity, not to view the footage herself.
Instead, Mr. Babono recalls, she once simply announced, “Now I’m ready.”
So she sat next to the two men in their office as they presented a carefully selected portion of each video, explaining who the men were and what she would see them do to her. Then Mr. Babonne pressed the play button, and images of the Pellicotes’ bedroom in their bungalow in the village of Mazan flashed on the screen.
Giselle remained motionless, watching intently.
– How could he? she finally asked in her quiet voice. It was a phrase she would repeat over the next few days.
Then a little later she marked the date on one of the videos.
“It was the evening of my birthday.”
“It happened in (my) daughter’s bed. In her beach house.’
Mr Babono remembers Mrs Pellicott’s constant outrage, but also noted that she never cried and that, with the help of experts, she managed to “put an impressive distance between what she saw and her mental health”.
Lawyers saw the moment as the “last test” that showed their client had regained “some balance” in the four years since November 4, 2020, when she was told of her husband’s actions and “her world was shattered.”
Now she was ready to face the rigors of a public trial.
