A French woman, whose husband admitted in court to repeatedly drugging her so she could be raped by other men, has testified on her years-long ordeal in the public trial of 51 of her alleged abusers, including him.
Gisele Pelicot, 72, took the stand for the first time at the Vaucluse criminal court in Avignon, southern France, on Thursday, recounting the moment in 2020 when police showed her images revealing a decade of sexual abuse, apparently orchestrated and filmed by her husband.
“My world fell apart, everything I had built up with Mr Pelicot collapsed. Three children, seven grandchildren … Even our friends told us we were the perfect couple,” she said, according to French newspaper La Depeche du Midi.
Pelicot and her husband of 50 years were living in their family home in the village of Mazan in Provence when the horrific revelation of the abuse, which is alleged to have taken place between 2011 and 2020, was made.
Police had arrested Dominique Pelicot, 71, after he was caught taking photos up women’s skirts in a supermarket, leading investigators to search his phone and computer, finding thousands of photographs and videos of men appearing to rape his visibly drugged wife.
The plaintiff, who agreed that her full name be published, was then summoned to the police station in the nearby commune of Carpentras, where she was shown the photos.
The mother of three told the court that, at first, she did not recognise herself. Reaching the third photo, she told the police officer to stop. “These are rape scenes, I’m inert, asleep and they’re raping me. Rape is not the right word, it is barbarism,” she had told him.
The police, she said, had “saved my life” by investigating her husband’s computer.
On the third day of the trial on Tuesday, her husband answered “yes” when asked if he was guilty of the accusations against him.
The retiree had documented his actions on a hard drive in a folder labelled “abuse”, allowing police to track down the men suspected of raping her while she was drugged.
Investigators counted about 200 instances of rape, most of them by the plaintiff’s husband and more than 90 by strangers enlisted through an adult website.
The plaintiff has insisted that the trial take place in public, so the full facts of the case emerge.
Stephane Babonneau, one of her two lawyers, said there would be “extremely difficult moments” for her as she testifies.
She remained silent through the first three days of the trial, communicating through her lawyers.
On Wednesday, lawyers for the defence asked investigators whether Pelicot and her husband had a libertine relationship and whether it was credible that she had noticed nothing for the entire decade of the abuse.
The line of questioning appeared to upset her, though she remained when her three children briefly left the courtroom in disgust.
“Of course she was offended,” said Antoine Camus, her second lawyer, who said his client had wanted to respond. “We felt her bobbing up and down behind us, saying ‘I want to answer, I just have to answer’, and we told her: ‘tomorrow!’”
Eighteen of the 51 accused, including the plaintiff’s husband, are in custody, while 32 other defendants are attending the trial as free men. The last one, still at large, will be judged in absentia.
Most suspects face up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape if convicted.
The trial is expected to last four months until December 20.