A husband accused in France of drugging his wife and inviting dozens of strangers to rape her has complained that HIS life has been ruined by the trial.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, blamed his wife, Gisele, because she refused to go along with his “swinging” demands, a court in Avignon was told.
Prison psychologist Marianne Douteau said Pelicot, a retired electrician, believed his marriage would have continued if he hadn’t been caught out after drugging his spouse and subjecting her to sex with other men over ten years.
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She said that Pelicot “complains that this criminal case against him has destroyed his life.
“He claims everything could have continued as before if he had been arrested. He said, ‘Gisele would not have known anything, we would have continued to be happy.’
Douteau said Pelicot had a “split personality” and was abused by his wife-beating father.
“Dominique Pelicot comes from a troubled family in which young children were abused.
"(Pelicot) has a two-sided personality; he is a patriarch but he is also irresponsible and manipulative. Behind closed doors he does not respect limits,” she said. “He has a split personality between the person he wants to be and the person he is. He does not show any empathy—but he is not inauthentic.”
Pelicot was excused from the courtroom on Monday after suffering from an undisclosed illness.
Another psychologist, Annabelle Montagne, who interviewed Pelicot six weeks after his arrest in 2020, said he told her: “My wife and I had a discussion about swinging but she didn't agree so I drugged her.”
She said he was insistent he loved his wife, but she continued: “He sees his partner as an object to satisfy his sexual and narcissistic needs. His wife is then a partial object and no longer an object of total love.”
The couple met when they were both 18 and married two years later.
The court heard she was drugged by her husband and raped on the marital bed while her husband watched and recorded the abuse for his pleasure.
Last week, Gisele faced 51 men, her husband among them, who have been accused of raping her. The grandmother-of-seven told the court: “I was subjected on the altar of vice. It’s a dead woman on a bed. This isn’t a bedroom, it’s an operating theatre. They treat me like a garbage bag, a rag doll. These aren’t sex scenes, these are rape scenes, it unbearable.”
On Pelicot’s computer, police discovered 20,000 homemade movies and photos of men raping his wife in abuses dating back to 2011.
He contacted the men via Internet sites. Sixteen of them, including Pelicot, have confessed to the assaults and 35 are maintaining their innocence.
The trial continues.
