A French woman who was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of other men for over a decade testified Thursday at a trial that has shocked the world.
Gisèle Pélicot, 72, gave evidence in an Avignon court, where 51 men including her spouse of 50 years face rape charges. Dominique Pélicot, 71, admitted to police that he derived satisfaction from observing other men rape his unconscious wife, according to court documents.
“My world is falling apart, for me, everything is falling apart” is how Gisèle Pélicot described learning of what had happened after a police investigation into contents on her husband’s computer.
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Gisèle Pélicot recalled being summoned to a police station in November 2020, two months after her husband was arrested for filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping center. She assumed it was related to that case.
“The police officer asked me about my sex life,” she told the court. “I told him I had never practiced partner-swapping or threesomes. I said I was a one man woman. I couldn’t bear any man’s hands on me other than my husband’s.”
She then suffered a horrifying revelation when officers showed her images taken of her.
“I am inert, in my bed, and I am being raped,” she said of what investigators uncovered. “These are scenes of barbarity. My world is collapsing, everything is collapsing, everything I have built in 50 years. These are scenes of horror for me.”
After the third photo the officer showed her, Gisèle Pélicot asked for it to stop.
Police found nearly 4,000 photos and videos on her husband’s computers, USB sticks, and hard drives, documenting at least 200 rapes from 2011 to 2020, first in the Paris region, but mostly in Mazan, the southern commune of 6,000 where the couple moved in 2013.
Many of the defendants in the case have rejected the charge against them, claiming they believed they were participating in a consensual act that both Pélicots were aware of.
“Don't talk to me about sex scenes, these are rape scenes, I have never practiced threesomes or swinging, I want to say that,” Gisèle Pélicot told the court, alluding to those claims. “I was never an accomplice.”
Pélicot said she had—to her knowledge—a mostly happy marriage before the discovery, one that persisted through health and financial challenges. “All that we had built together had gone,” she said. “Our three children, seven grandchildren. We used to be an ideal couple.”
“I wanted to disappear,” Gisèle Pélicot told the court. “But I had to tell my children their father was under arrest. I asked my son-in-law to stay next to my daughter when I told her that her father had raped me, and had me raped by others. She let out a howl that is still etched in my mind.”
The court is scheduled to hear more evidence from the investigation in the coming days. Dominique Pélicot allegedly contacted men through sex-chat websites, inviting them to his home and giving strict instructions. Police say the men were told to park away from their house so as not to draw attention, to wait for as much as an hour so the sleeping drugs he gave Gisèle Pélicot could take effect, to undress in the kitchen, and to warm their hands with hot water or on a radiator. Tobacco and perfume were prohibited, as Dominique Pélicot feared they might awake his wife, but condoms were not required.
No money traded hands. Most of the other men lived nearby, though Gisèle Pélicot said she only recognized one.
“He was our neighbor,” she told the presiding judge. “He came over to check our bikes. I used to see him at the bakery. He was always polite. I had no idea he was coming to rape me.”
Gisèle Pélicot took the unusual step of waiving her anonymity rights so that the trial could be open to the public.
“I speak for all women who are drugged and don't know about it, I do it on behalf of all women who will perhaps never know,” she told the court, explaining why she declined a closed-door trial. “So that no more women have to suffer.”
