Harrowing details have emerged at the trial of a French man charged with enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his drugged wife, with their daughter temporarily leaving the courtroom as she became overwhelmed by emotion.
The case against Dominique Pélicot, 71, has horrified France after the allegations were only exposed by chance when he was caught filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket.
The trial in the southern city of Avignon, due to conclude in December, holds rape charges against him and 50 other men he allegedly recruited online to abuse his wife.
His wife, Gisèle Pélicot, is attending the trial, which she has asked be open to the public, as are their daughter and two sons.
Her lawyers say she was so heavily sedated she was not aware of the abuse that went on for a decade.
The presiding judge, Roger Arata, who leads a panel of five judges, read out the main findings of the investigation on the second day of the trial on Tuesday.
The allegations were first exposed on 12 September 2020 when a security guard detained Pélicot in a supermarket in the town of Carpentras for filming up customers’ skirts.
Condoms and a camera were found in his pocket. When questioned Pélicot said he had “acted on impulses” that he had “not been able to control”.
Arata recounted how naked photomontages of Pélicot’s daughter, who uses the pen name Caroline Darian, had been found on his computer in a folder titled “Around my daughter, naked”. Darian collapsed in tears and was escorted from the courtroom by her two brothers and her lawyer, Antoine Camus, but reappeared about 20 minutes later.
In 2022 Darian wrote a book Et J’ai Cesse de T’appeler Papa (And I Stopped Calling You Dad) about the effect of the discovery of the alleged crimes on the family.
Gisèle Pélicot remained calm and reserved throughout, while her husband sat directly opposite her at the other end of the courtroom listening intently.
There are 72 other suspects in the case but only 50 have been tracked down. Eighteen of the accused, including Pélicot, are in custody, while 32 other defendants are attending the trial as free men. A 51st man is being judged in absentia.
Most of them face up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape if convicted.
During searches, investigators came across thousands of photos and videos showing Gisèle Pélicot being sexually abused by strangers recruited on an online forum called “Without her knowledge” on the controversial website Coco, which was shut down by the courts in June.
Pélicot, who appeared on the site under a pseudonym, claimed he took part in the forum “occasionally” and that it was “not his habit”.
But several discussions were found in which he sometimes used the term “rape” and told potential attackers that administering sleeping pills to his wife allowed him to abuse her by engaging in practices she would normally refuse.
He ordered 450 pills in the space of a year, according to national health insurance.
Police said they found hundreds of pictures and videos of Gisèle Pélicot on his computer, visibly unconscious and mostly in the foetal position.
The images are alleged to show dozens of rapes in the couple’s home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people about 20 miles (30km) from Avignon, in Provence.