In the front row of the Mazan rape trial, Julie-Émile Fabre draws Dominique Pelicot and the 50 rapists during one of the most significant trials in recent years. From this immersion was born Le Procès, a hybrid book where court sketches, notes taken on the spot and an intimate story question the sexist, family and social violence that crosses ordinary lives.
She had not gone to Avignon to draw but to approach this trial, which already obsessed her. The Pelicot trial. Before truly knowing her essence, she knew that this story would awaken painful memories in her. The Nîmoise had heard about it in the media, she knew that something huge would happen there. On September 30, 2024, Julie-Émile Fabre arrived in court. The first two days, she sits in the broadcast room and takes notes. Lots of notes.
A trial that is taking shape
And then she sees an accredited designer in the courtroom. But of course, she will sketch this extraordinary trial that is taking shape! It is also taking shape since there is no audiovisual recording. Julie-Émile obtains accreditation and, on the third day, sits down, notebook in hand, right in front of the court. To her left, Gisèle Pelicot and her lawyers. To his right, Dominique Pelicot in the box, and the fifty other accused.
Julie Émile-Fabre – The trial • @Yannick Pons
This is the true birth of his book, The Trial. An extraordinary encounter in the end. Julie-Émile Fabre follows the hearing from September 30 to the verdict on December 18, 2024. She misses Fridays, held back by her classes. Holder of a doctoral thesis on “precarious work”, Nîmoise teaches plastic arts at a college in Beaucaire, part-time. She draws 200 plates.
His drawings are accompanied by notes taken on the spot. She wanted to preserve the orality of the debates, the substance of the words, the defenses, the justifications, the shifts in language. She started with pencil, then watercolor, often with colored pencil.
On the Avignon bench
When she arrived in Avignon, she was already writing another text, more personal, on domestic violence and on her own journey to emancipation. The trial then comes to impact this work in progress. What she hears in court takes her back to her own history, to ordinary violence experienced within her own family. No rape, no physical violence. Violence inherent in generational opposition, which probably everyone felt in their childhood. Probably more for her, because she opposed very early on this femininity that was imposed on her.
The author from Nîmes cites bell hooks, masculine norms like feminine norms produce violence. Gender construction also hurts boys. Virility can be a trap, the injunctions not to cry, to be strong, to hold your place also create damage.
If it gently opens the subject of patriarchy, the book does not put his family on trial either. His intention was not to accuse his people, even less to settle scores. Julie-Émile wishes to bring to light widespread violence, sometimes silent, sometimes not elaborated upon, which affects ordinary families. His father read the book and it reopened a dialogue.
“The court doesn’t want anything from you. He welcomes you when you arrive and leaves you when you leave.”
She wanted to write a book where her intimate experience and this trial come together. Starting from the most personal, the most buried, then moving towards the most exposed legal scene of the moment, the Pelicot trial. She would have liked to call her book Surviving Childhood, but was satisfied with the title chosen by the publisher, The Trial.
The title of Kafka’s book, in these conditions, takes on its full meaning with this quotation: “The court doesn’t want anything from you. He welcomes you when you arrive and leaves you when you leave.”
She walked into this courtroom, she went through a mind-blowing human tragedy. Then everything stops. The void. Julie-Émile Fabre says that at first she perhaps thought she was simply observing. Very quickly, she understands that she cannot stay on the threshold of the courtroom. You had to get in there. Watch, listen. Transmit, put down words and faces. When she is not drawing in her workshop in Nîmes, she teaches and works on gender-based and sexual violence with her students, in the school setting, with caution.
The Trial is a book born from an extraordinary legal event, which happened right next door. A book of drawings, saturated with words. A personal book, but not self-centered. Julie-Émile entered court. She leaves with much more than an audience record. A book, a transmission, a story.
Julie-Émile Fabre, The Trial. From domestic violence to the Pelicot affair
Éditions Morgen, 200 pages, €24.90.
In bookstores since March 4, 2026, notably at Goyard in Nîmes.
Artist-author, teacher and doctor in visual arts, Julie-Émile Fabre attended the entire Pelicot trial as an accredited designer. From this experience was born a hybrid work combining courtroom drawings, notes taken on the spot, political reflection and an intimate story around sexist and intra-family violence.
