BRAVE grandmother Gisele Pelicot barely wavered yesterday as she stood up to face the 51 men alleged to have raped her at the request of her husband.
Taking the stand for the first time at a trial which has shocked the world, the 71-year-old mother of three told how she had been left “a heap of ruins” by the ultimate betrayal of a man she had considered a “well-intentioned and nice guy” during their 51-year-marriage.
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Over nearly a decade, retired electrician Dominique Pelicot, 71, invited strangers to have sex with his wife as she lay drugged and defenceless in their family home in a small town in southern France.
The heavy sedatives, crumbled into her dinner, left Gisele with such severe memory loss that she feared she had Alzheimer’s.
It was only after police uncovered her husband’s secret crimes that she knew anything about the men who had attacked her night after night.
Yesterday, dressed in red, Gisele stared at the impassive Pelicot, and said: “I was sacrificed by my husband for these obscenities.
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‘Broke down in tears’
“I was a woman drugged and abused.
“It was like I was dead.
“I was treated like a piece of meat.”
One of the men who’d had intercourse with Gisele without her knowledge risked killing her because he has HIV.
Her husband, who she is divorcing, has pleaded guilty to rape, as have 13 other men.
But 35 defendants deny rape and another one is on the run.
In total, the number of attackers is believed to number 83, with a two-year-long investigation unable to identify them all.
The accused men, whose ages range from 21 to 68, include a councillor, nurse, fireman, IT worker, prison guard and a journalist.
Due to the huge number of defendants, the trial is being held in a converted exhibition centre in Avignon and is scheduled to go on until December 20.
There is not enough room in the dock for all the accused men.
Those that have not been held in custody sit in the gallery next to the unsuspecting public.
Pelicot, though, has been remanded in prison and is likely to receive a 20-year jail sentence for his crimes.
The world would not know Pelicot’s name and the trial would have been held in private if it were not for the courageous victim.
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Gisele, who waived her right to anonymity, defied demands from prosecution and defence lawyers for journalists and the public to be barred from the court.
That is because she wants to shed light on the scourge of men drugging women prior to intercourse.
Some of the accused men claimed they thought it was permitted on the grounds that, “it’s his wife, he does what he likes with her”.
Another told the police that he thought it had to be legal because it was recorded on video.
The first sign that something was amiss came when Gisele, who married Pelicot in 1980 and has two sons and a daughter, started to lose hair and weight.
She would forget whole days and jokingly asked her husband if he was drugging her.
He replied tearfully: “You actually think I could do that?”
The couple went to see her doctor together, and the GP suggested Gisele might have suffered a “brain seizure”.
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The truth only emerged four years ago after Pelicot was arrested in September 2020 for filming up the skirts of women in a supermarket in the town of Carpentras, not far from their home in Mazan.
That brought to an end a reign of depravity that stretched back to 2011.
The police seized Pelicot’s mobile phone and laptop, discovering 20,000 videos and photographs.
Many of them were in a folder titled “abuse”, showing various men performing sexual acts on Gisele while she was unconscious.
They included fridge engineer Thierry Postat, 61, who is accused of assaulting her while her legs and hands were tied.
Married male nurse Redouan El Farihi is said to have abused Gisele with her husband for three hours.
Pelicot went to great lengths to ensure his wife did not suspect anyone else had been in their bedroom.
‘Insult to my intelligence’
He insisted all the other men involved did not wear aftershave in case Gisele smelt it on her body when she woke up.
Pelicot also made them take off their clothes in another room to prevent any strange items ending up beneath the bed and ensured his wife always woke up in her pyjamas.
Gisele told the court: “I never woke up in a different outfit.”
She now refers to her husband as “Mr Pelicot” and plans to revert to her maiden name when the trial ends.
The defence team tried to undermine Gisele’s reputation yesterday by bringing up her two-year affair with a friend.
But the housewife insisted the lover was the only man she ever slept with knowingly, aside from her husband.
Gisele also denied ever allowing Pelicot to record their lovemaking and revealed that she had refused his suggestion that they try alternative sexual partners.
When pressed on whether she had consented to sex with any of the defendants, she replied: “It’s an insult to my intelligence.
“These individuals were totally aware of what state I was in.
He said he had been caught in a supermarket in Carpentras filming under women’s skirts.
Gisele Pelicot
“I never knowingly took part in any of these things.”
It wasn’t until December 2020 that Pelicot told her about being caught upskirting.
In a frail voice, Gisele told the packed court: “We were in the kitchen when he sat down and broke down in tears.
“He said he’d done something silly. I asked him what.
“He said he had been caught in a supermarket in Carpentras filming under women’s skirts.
“In 50 years, Mr Pelicot had never taken pictures of other women.
“I said ‘I forgive you, as we’ve never had any problems in 50 years.
“But there won’t be a next time, otherwise I’ll leave.”
There was to be no forgiveness when detectives later told Gisele about the extent of her husband’s horrific crimes.
The grandmother revealed the terrible impact his unspeakable acts had upon their once-happy family.
‘State of shock’
She said: “When I told my daughter, she screamed like a wild beast.
“I will never forget this.
“When I told my sons about this, I don’t think they really understood.
“They were withdrawn and didn’t react much.
“I think they were in a state of shock.
“They said, ‘Don’t say such silly things.’
“That evening, the children rang all the time saying don’t disappear — they were worried I might die.”
Under the pen name Caroline Darian, their 45-year-old daughter wrote a book about the case in 2022, titled And I Stopped Calling You Dad.
The court heard this week that her father kept a file on his computer, marked “Around my daughter, naked” which contained nude images of Caroline.
She fears that she was also raped by strangers on the say-so of her father, adding: “I’m convinced I was drugged, but he’ll never admit it.”
And there could be many even victims.
In a separate case, Pelicot has been charged with the rape and murder of a 23-year-old estate agent in Paris in 1991.
It is thanks to Gisele that society will learn about the full horrors that were inflicted upon her.
Grant Rollings
He pleaded guilty to one attempted rape in 1999, thanks to DNA evidence.
There are also other women who appear to have been drugged and raped as a result of the internet sex ring Pelicot joined.
He found his accomplices on an online chat room titled in French “A Son Insu”, which translates as “without their knowledge.”
The now-banned site has been linked to 23,000 potential crimes from 2021 to 2024 alone.
Up until the start of the trial, this had been known as the “Mazan case” and Pelicot was only named as Dominique P.
It is thanks to Gisele that society will learn about the full horrors that were inflicted upon her.
But while she appeared largely calm and composed when facing her alleged attackers yesterday, she is hiding terrible scars that may never heal.
As she told the court: “When you look at me you think she’s strong, this woman, but inside it’s a heap of ruins.
“The facade is strong.
“Inside it’s not the same.”