Taking the stand in France’s biggest ever rape trial, Patrice N, 55, an electrician from the southern town of Carpentras, said he was a “jovial” guy and a fun dad who once trained youth football teams and had a “great respect for women”.
He denied the charges of rape, claiming rape had never been his intention. “To my mind, it was a game,” he told the court.
Patrice N is one of 51 men on trial for the alleged rape and assault of Gisèle Pelicot, a former logistics manager, who has become a feminist hero for insisting the trial should be held in public.
For a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020, Gisèle Pelicot was unknowingly sedated and raped by her former husband, Dominique Pelicot, who crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and invited men to rape her at their home in the picturesque village of Mazan in Provence.
Gisèle Pelicot told the court this week that she felt “destroyed” but was driven by “the determination to change society” and expose “rape culture”.
After dozens of accused men have testified that they did not think what happened was rape, her lawyers said the court hearings have exposed a “profound problem” in society’s attitudes to sexual violence.
Despite video evidence in court showing Gisèle Pelicot in an unconscious state, snoring loudly, Patrice N claimed he had not noticed that she was sedated on the Monday night in February 2020 when he drove 20 minutes to the couples’ home after he he had been in contact with Dominique Pelicot online.
Dominique Pelicot ushered Patrice N into the bedroom, where he stayed for about one hour with the lights on. It was only at the end of the visit, when he said, “Your wife looks like she’s really asleep”, that Dominique Pelicot said he gave his wife “pills”.
Patrice N said he asked if this happened often, to which Dominique Pelicot replied that after drugging his wife, he would also take her to motorway laybys and “hand her to men”. Patrice N said: “I told him he was sick, I walked round the bed and left straight away … He didn’t even text me to see if I got home OK.”
One of the judges asked Patrice N: “You heard him say he delivered his drugged wife to men in laybys, but you did nothing to help her, you didn’t report it?”
He said: “I didn’t want to waste my time at the police station. I’m a humble neighbourhood electrician. If I went to the police and said she’s unconscious, who would have believed me?”
Gisèle Pelicot, watched from her seat in court, and shook her head.
From the dock, Dominique Pelicot told the court that he did not hand his then wife to men at roadsides, but had once drugged and raped her himself in a motorway layby on the way back from their daughter’s holiday home.
Patrice N, like several other men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot, was supported in court by a number of women who knew him who said they didn’t think him capable of rape. A longtime female friend, who worked as an education expert, told the court that Patrice N had always been a “teddy bear”, “wasn’t even a skirt-chaser” and wasn’t the type to rape. A care-worker, who 16 months ago became Patrice N’s girlfriend despite knowing he was charged with rape in the Pelicot case, said: “He treats me like a princess.”
Three accused men in court this week did take the rare step of admitting rape, saying they knew Gisèle Pelicot had been drugged and was unconscious.
Abdelali D, 47, a former canteen worker who had suffered a stroke since his arrest, said he went to the Pelicots’ home twice and raped Gisèle Pelicot when she was in a comatose state. The first time, one January night in 2018, he had asked his then girlfriend to drive him to the Pelicots’ village and wait an hour for him in the car. She told the court she had driven him because she was worried about him driving drunk. She thought he was meeting a couple for a sexual encounter, but had not sought details. “I didn’t want to know,” she said. She described Abdelali D as someone who “drank morning, noon and night”.
Jean-Luc L, 46, a mirror-maker, admitted raping Gisèle Pelicot on two occasions in 2018 and 2019 while she was unconscious. He had at first thought that because her husband had consented for her, “it wasn’t against the law”. He told a psychologist after his arrest that the definition of rape was instead something that “happens in the street” in the style of “if you don’t want it, I’ll hit you”. But in court, he admitted raping Gisèle Pelicot in her own bedroom.
The court heard Jean-Luc L had fled Vietnam by boat with his mother as a child and had lived in refugee camps before coming to France. His second wife, of 10 years, and the mother of his two youngest children, was also Vietnamese. Through an interpreter, she told the court that because her own mother was ill at the time, she had not wanted sex with her husband. Asked how she felt when she learned of the rape charges against her husband, she said in a soft voice: “I was very sad, in shock. But I think because I refused him all the time, as a man he had to look elsewhere.”
Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, told the court: “You thought that because you refused a sexual relationship, because your mother was very ill and your mind was on other things, you thought you had a role in what happened, and Gisèle Pelicot could not help reacting. For her, it’s not because you refused a sexual relationship that it led to this happening.
“There is never an obligation to have sexual relations with your husband. Do you understand that? … Gisèle Pelicot says you have no responsibility whatsoever in the fact that your husband decided to do what he did.”
The court heard that Dominique Pelicot had suggested he also drug Jean-Luc L’s wife so the two men could rape her. “I told him I’d think about it just to please him,” said Jean-Luc L. “But sex wasn’t really her thing.”
Quentin H, 34, was a prison guard in Avignon who had sold MDMA drugs on the website where Dominique Pelicot sought men. He admitted raping Gisèle Pelicot in her bed in November 2019. He said he realised “something wasn’t right”, and Gisèle Pelicot wasn’t moving. Asked why, as a prison warden, he did not report this to police, he said: “I was ashamed, I wanted to get it out of my head.”
The trial continues until 20 December.