“The manipulation stopped at the bedroom door,” said Mr Camus. “All, upon leaving this house of horror, realised that other men had been there beforehand. None thought it necessary to alert the police.”
In her final address to the court on Tuesday, Gisèle Pelicot denounced defendants as “cowards” and that the “acts of barbarity” she had endured would prevent her from feeling “at peace until the end of my life”. She added: “I’ll learn to live with it. I’ll rebuild myself. But there’ll forever be 51 people who have defiled me.”
Fourteen men have confessed to raping her, while the others deny the charges, arguing that they thought they were taking part in consensual sex games.
“For me, this trial is the trial of cowardice,” she said, adding that while she offered a modicum of recognition to those who confessed to rape by “looking at them in the eye” during their testimony, none had spared her despite her plainly comatose state when they entered the couple’s home.
She said the defendants recruited by her ex-husband may have been “naive” to come to the house. But she insisted: “Your conscience has to kick in when you step into the bedroom. They [the defendants] are not children.”
‘Saving their own skin’
Ms Pelicot said: “It was every man for himself. They all left thinking that there was a problem and they thought about saving their own skin, but not that of this poor unconscious woman. For me, they are all guilty.”
She said Mr Pelicot, with whom she was married for 50 years and had three children, used her to fulfil his sexual fantasies. Referring to him as Monsieur Pelicot, she said: “He found a way by drugging me. He said to himself, ‘I will do what I want with her, by delivering her to strangers’.
“I think Monsieur Pelicot had a lot of fantasies that I perhaps could not satisfy with him. He was very frustrated. But how did he get to that point?”
“As I didn’t want to go to a swingers’ club, he thought he’d found the solution by putting me to sleep.”
Mr Pélicot confirmed her analysis on Tuesday by saying his main motive was to “subjugate an unsubmissive woman”.
She said she had no idea of the abuse until police showed her video evidence they stumbled upon after arresting Mr Pélicot for upskirting in a supermarket in 2020.
The court was told that the first she knew of the rapes was when police started investigating her former husband after he was caught filming under women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020. Officers then discovered the videos he had made of men having sex with his unconscious wife.
Asked if her ex-husband was a sexual predator, she said: “Of course, certainly”, adding: “I don’t forgive him. His actions were unforgivable. I was betrayed and fooled.
“I couldn’t have imagined for a second he was capable of chemical submission … my friends, my family saw nothing.”
As to her decision to make the trial public to ensure “shame changes sides”, she told the court: “I knew what I was exposing myself to by refusing [a trial] behind closed doors. I admit that I feel tired now. I have been in the courtroom all the way through.”
Asked why she continued to use her ex-husband’s name during the trials, she said: “I have grandchildren who are called that. Today, I want them to be proud of their grandmother.
“My name is known across the world now. They shouldn’t be ashamed of carrying that name. Today, we will remember Gisèle Pelicot.”