The courage of a woman, allegedly drugged by her ex-husband and abused by dozens of men he brought into their home, shocked the world as she testified against her attackers.
Gisele Pelicot, 72, told the crowd outside the court in France on Thursday: “We will fight to the end.” During her testimony, she recounted the horror of discovering that her ex-husband had recorded her unconscious while being raped by a total of 72 men and stored thousands of images that police later found.
The trial of 71-year-old Dominique Pelicot, along with 50 other men accused of aggravated rape, began on Monday in the southern French city of Avignon. The proceedings are being held in public at the insistence of Gisele Pelicot, who has also waived her right to anonymity. Gisele hopes her testimony will help prevent other women from suffering similar abuse, after she was the victim of “perversion” and contracted four sexually transmitted infections from the attacks.
In a calm, poised voice, the 72-year-old told the court of the moment her world “fell apart” when she was faced with the unimaginable. After uncovering years of alleged abuse, police showed her footage of “cruelty” that her husband of 50 years and father of her three children had apparently stored up.
“It’s unbearable,” she said, giving her testimony for the first time on Thursday. “I have so much to say that sometimes I don’t know where to start.”
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Gisele Pelicot in front of the Avignon court on Thursday, where judges are considering allegations that she was drugged and raped for years (AP)
When Gisele Pelicot and her husband retired, the couple moved into a house in Mazan, a small town in Provence. “I thought we were a united couple,” she told the court.
However, in late 2020, a security guard caught her husband taking photos of women’s crotches in a supermarket. This led investigators to search both his phone and computer. In the footage, they discovered thousands of photos and videos in which several men apparently raped Gisele Pelicot in her own home while she was unconscious.
When police called her in for questioning, she described her husband as “a wonderful man.” But the officers showed her some of the images. “At that moment, my world fell apart,” she said. “They were scenes of barbarism, of rape.”
She left home with only two suitcases. “All that was left of our 50 years of life together,” she said. She also admitted: “I don’t know who I am anymore.” […] I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to recover.”
Police investigators found messages that Dominique Pelicot had allegedly sent via a messaging site used by criminals, inviting several men to sexually abuse his wife. Earlier this year, French authorities decided to shut down the website.
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Gisele Pelicot (center) arrives at the court in Avignon in southern France on Thursday (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved))
In addition to the alleged abuses that investigators say began in 2011, shocking details about the system Dominique Pelicot implemented for a decade came to light at the trial.
Pelicot told investigators that men invited to the couple’s home were required to follow specific rules: They could not speak loudly, they had to undress in the kitchen and they were not allowed to wear perfume or smell of tobacco.
Sometimes the men had to wait up to an hour and a half in a nearby parking lot for the drug to take full effect and render Gisele Pelicot unconscious.
During Thursday’s hearing, the toxicologist spoke of a “cocktail” composed of lorazepam and zolpidem, drugs with hypnotic and anxiolytic effects. A medical specialist revealed that the alleged attackers did not use condoms, which caused Gisele Pelicot to contract four sexually transmitted diseases.
“I was a victim of perversion,” Gisele Pelicot said in her testimony. “They saw me as a rag doll, as a garbage bag.”
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Caroline, Gisele Pelicot’s daughter, in French court on Wednesday ((REUTERS))
The names of victims of sexual crimes are usually kept anonymous, but Gisele Pelicot has authorized the publication of her identity, according to her lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, who also stressed that she insisted that the trial be public. Gisele Pelicot explained in court that she made this decision to show her support for other women who are not recognized as victims of sexual crimes.
Thanks to video recordings of the alleged rapes orchestrated by Dominique Pelicot, the police were able to locate, over the course of two years, most of the 72 suspects they were looking for.
Dominique Pelicot and the 50 other defendants, men aged between 22 and 70, face sentences of up to 20 years in prison, with the trial due to run until December. Several of the defendants deny some of the accusations against them and say Dominique Pelicot misled them.
During her questioning in court, Gisele Pelicot rejected the idea that any of these men had been manipulated or deceived.
“These men came into my house and respected the protocol imposed. Nobody forced them to hold a gun to their head while they raped me; they did it in full awareness,” she noted. “Why didn’t they go to the police? Even an anonymous call could have saved my life.”
In the coming months, the defendants will appear in small groups before a tribunal composed of five judges, with Dominique Pelicot next week. Psychologists, psychiatrists and computer experts will also testify.
Outside the courthouse, Gisele Pelicot told reporters that she had tried to answer the lawyers’ questions as best she could, despite the pressure of having all those “individuals” behind her. “We will fight until the end,” she said.
Translation by Leticia Zampedri
