A brave woman allegedly drugged by her now ex-husband and raped by dozens of men he invited to their home has captivated the world as she testified against her suspected abusers.
Gisele Pelicot, 72, told crowds outside the French courthouse on Thursday, “We will have to fight until the end,” after detailing the horror of discovering that her former spouse had systematically filmed the alleged rapes by 72 suspects while she was unconscious — storing thousands of images that police investigators later found.
The trial of Dominique Pelicot, now 71, and 50 other men on charges of aggravated rape got underway in the southern French city of Avignon on Monday — in public, at the insistence of Gisele Pelicot, who also waived her right to anonymity. She said she hopes her testimony might help spare other women from similar ordeals, after she “was sacrificed on the altar of vice” and left with four sexually transmitted infections.
Speaking in a calm and clear voice with impressive composure, the 72-year-old told the court of the moment her world “collapses” when she was confronted with the unfathomable. After uncovering years of suspected abuse, police showed her some of the images of “barbarity” allegedly stored by her husband of 50 years with whom she had three children.
“It’s unbearable,” she testified for the first time on Thursday in an hour of evidence. “I have so much to say that I don’t always know where to start.”
When Gisele Pelicot and her husband retired, the couple moved into a house in Mazan, a small town in Provence. “I thought we were a close couple,” she told the court.
But in late 2020, a security agent caught her husband taking photos of women’s crotches in a supermarket, leading investigators to search Dominique Pelicot’s phone and computer. They found thousands of photographs and videos of men appearing to rape Gisele Pelicot in their home while she appears to be unconscious.
When the police called her in for questioning, she initially told them her husband was “a great guy”. But then officers showed her some of the images. “For me, everything collapses,” she testified. “These are scenes of barbarity, of rape.”
She left her husband, taking just two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together”. Since then, she said, “I no longer have an identity … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself.”
Police investigators found communications Dominique Pelicot allegedly sent on a messaging website commonly used by criminals, in which he invited men to sexually abuse his wife. French authorities shut down the website earlier this year.
Crude details of the alleged abuses, which investigators said began in 2011, and of the elaborate system Dominique Pelicot put into place over 10 years have emerged during the trial.
Dominique Pelicot told investigators that men invited to the couple’s home had to follow certain rules — they could not talk loudly, had to remove their clothes in the kitchen, could not wear perfume nor smell of tobacco.
They sometimes had to wait up to an hour and a half in a nearby parking lot for the drug to take full effect and render Gisele Pelicot unconscious.
The toxicologist on Thursday spoke of a “cocktail” of medication, a mixture of Temesta and Zolpidem, hypnotic and anxiolytic drugs. A medical expert said that the alleged rapists were not made to wear condoms and that Gisele Pelicot had contracted four sexually transmitted infections.
“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” Gisele Pelicot testified. “They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.”
Victims of sexual crimes are not generally identified. But Gisele Pelicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau said she accepted that her name would be published in the same way that she insisted that the trial be held in open court. Gisele Pelicot told the court she pushed for this in solidarity with other women who go unrecognised as victims of sexual crimes.
Because Dominique Pelicot videotaped the alleged rapes, police were able to track down — over a period of two years — a majority of the 72 suspects they were seeking.
Dominique Pelicot and the 50 other accused, men aged 22 to 70, face up to 20 years in prison, with the trial set to run until December. Several defendants are denying some of the accusations against them, alleging they were manipulated by Dominique Pelicot.
Questioned in court, Gisele Pelicot rejected the argument that any of these men were manipulated or trapped.
“These men entered my home, respected the imposed protocol. They did not rape me with a gun to the head. They raped me in all conscience,” she said. “Why didn’t they go to the police station? Even an anonymous phone call could have saved my life.”
Over the next few months, the defendants will appear in small groups before a panel of five judges, with Dominique Pelicot scheduled to speak next week. Psychologists, psychiatrists and computer experts will also testify.
Outside the courthouse, Gisele Pelicot told reporters she had tried to answer lawyers’ questions as best she could, despite the pressure of having all these “individuals” behind her. She said, “We will have to fight until the end.”