“My world collapsed,” said 72-year-old Gisele Pelicot, testifying at the Avignon court in the case of multiple rapes while she was drugged by her husband.
The police “saved my life,” she said, recounting the moment in November 2020 when investigators first showed her the images of the victim being sexually assaulted. She drugged by her husband of 50 years filming the rapists he had invited online.
“It’s unbearable”
Speaking in a calm and clear voice, Giselle Pellicaud detailed in court in the southern French city of Avignon the horror of discovering her ex-husband had been systematically videotaping suspected rapes by dozens of men — saving thousands of images they later found. the police investigators.
“I sacrificed myself on the altar of immorality”
“It’s unbearable,” he testified. “I have so much to say I don’t know where to begin.” “I sacrificed myself on the altar of immorality,” she testified. “I was seen as a rag doll, as a bag of garbage.”
“I thought we were a close couple”
Her husband of 50 years lived in their family home in a small town in Provence with their three children before her world fell apart in late 2020.
“I thought we were a close couple,” he told the court.
But a security agent caught her husband taking pictures of women’s crotch in a supermarket, prompting investigators to search Dominique Pélicot’s phone and computer. They found thousands of photos and videos of men who appear to be raping Gisèle in their home while she appears to be unconscious.
He declined anonymity
Giselle Pelicot, at the age of 72, refused the anonymity offered to her by the French justice and demanded “that everything be made public so that the shame changes sides”.
She testified that she hopes her testimony will help spare other women from similar ordeals and pushed for the trial to be held in an open, public courtroom in solidarity with other women who are not recognized as victims of sex crimes.
Earlier, the 71-year-old’s lawyers asked for the case to be heard behind closed doors. The judges finally accepted the woman’s request for the doors of the courtroom to be open until the end of the trial, as she said she was tired of being embarrassed while she was the victim.
The trial began on Monday with the main accused being the “mastermind” of the crime, the victim’s husband of 50 years, Dominic Peliko. 51 out of a total of 72 rapists are in the defendant’s dock.
The horror allegedly, according to investigators, began in 2011, and continued for a decade.
Rapists ‘obeyed husband’s rules’
Men invited to the couple’s home in Provence “couldn’t speak loudly, had to take off their clothes in the kitchen, couldn’t wear perfume or smell smoke,” French media reported.
Sometimes they had to wait up to an hour and a half in a nearby parking lot for the hypnotic the husband used to drug his wife before the rapes to take full effect.
Pélicot videotaped the rapes, so police were able to track down – over two years – most of the 72 suspects, aged 22 to 70, they were looking for.
The capture of Peliko
4 years ago, Dominic Pelico was arrested by police in a supermarket filming up women’s skirts. According to information that came to light, yesterday, during the trial, the perpetrator also kept nude photos of his daughter. After this revelation, the couple’s daughter left the courtroom, crying.
Upon further investigation, French police officers discovered thousands of photos and videos showing his wife, drugged and unconscious, being raped by strangers.
The trial began on Monday in the southern city of Avignon and is expected to last until December.
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