THE WIFE who was allegedly drugged by her husband so 72 men could rape her greeted one of her attackers in a bakery – not knowing that he partook in the abuse, a court heard.
Gisèle Pélicot, 71, has remained silent through the first three days of the heinous case in Avignon but took the stand today.
The brave mum was seen arriving at court this morning before taking the stand in a trial that could last four months.
The 71-year-old took the stand in the courtroom filled with the men accused of sexually assaulting her while she allegedly lay unconscious from being drugged.
Gisèle told the court she had only recognised one of her alleged rapists – a man who had come to their family home to discuss cycling with her husband.
She said she saw him again at a bakery, where she said “hello” – but she “never thought he’d come and rape [her]”.
Gisèle added “I feel disgusted” while demanding the accused to “for once in your lives at least, take responsibility for your actions”.
The men received “strict instructions, there was clear and transparent information” about what was happening, the Dominique Pélicot’s lawyer Zavarro said.
When you look at me you think she’s a strong woman, but inside she’s a heap of ruins”
Gisèle Pélicot
He continued: “If these men came [to the couple’s home], they were coming in the knowledge of what they were doing. That is what Mr P. will say.”
Gisèle believes she was “sacrificed by [her] husband” and compares her alleged drugging to being “dead”.
She also said she was “treated like a piece of meat”.
The brave mother and grandmother also told the court about having to be tested for HIV as one of her alleged attackers who came to rape her “six times” was “seropositive”.
The grandmother said: “My life was in danger but not one second did anyone stop.
“Lucky I didn’t catch it. But not once did Mr Pélicot say to himself, ‘I’ve gone too far’. He showed no pity, no pity at all.”
Gisèle’s daughter Caroline Darian, who’s in her 40s, wrote a book about the case called “And I stopped calling you Daddy”.
Lines from the harrowing book have been quoted by the judge in court.
She wrote how her dad Dominique allegedly stopped men he invited to the family home from wearing protection before sexually abusing her mum.
Gisèle also informed the court today she was “convinced” she had Alzheimer’s after first experiencing memory loss in 2011 and then in 2013.
She said how she’d asked her husband if he was drugging her as a joke – but he allegedly “broke down in tears” before saying: “You actually think I could do that?”
BY Juliana Cruz Lima, Foreign News Reporter
FRENCH pensioner Dominique Pélicot is on trial accused of drugging his wife and allowing 72 strangers to rape her.
The 71-year-old allegedly invited the men he met online to assault his wife Gisele Pélicot, 72, after slipping Lorazepam into her food to knock her out.
He is said to have then filmed the horrid attacks over nine years between 2011 and 2020.
After being married for two years since meeting in 1971, the pair went on to have three children together.
When the family moved to Mazan two years later, the horrific campaign of alleged sexual abuse directed by Pélicot is believed to have started in 2011 while they were residing close to Paris.
Cops launched an investigation When a security officer discovered the pensioner secretly recording three women’s skirts in a shopping centre in September 2020.
On his computer, hundreds of images and videos of his wife—mostly in the foetal position and clearly unconscious—were discovered, according to the police.
The pictures allegedly depicted numerous rapes that took place at the couple’s house in Mazan, a 6,000-person hamlet in Provence some 20 miles from Avignon.
Investigators also discovered talks on a website called coco.fr, which the police have since taken down, where he allegedly invited strangers to his house so he could have sex with his wife.
Investigators were then informed by Pélicot that he had given his wife strong tranquillizers, including the anxiety-relieving medication Temesta.
Prosecutors claim that the husband participated in the rapes, recorded them, and used degrading language to encourage the other men.
He described at earlier hearings the many measures he used to keep his wife and family from learning of his terrible activities.
Dominique Pélicot is also accused of a 1991 murder and rape, both of which he denies, and a 1999 attempted rape, which he acknowledged following DNA testing.
Although examinations published in court documents reportedly found that the man had a need to feel ‘all-powerful’ over the female body, experts said the man did not appear to be mentally ill.
The shocking trial is due to last until December 20.
The mum even said her husband came with her to see a doctor about concerns she had Alzheimer’s – and they allegedly told her she may have had a “brain seizure”.
She has referred to her husband Dominique as “Mr Pélicot”, who she says she’s in the process of divorcing.
The mum and grandmother said that she will keep her married name for the remainder of the trial but revert back to her maiden name afterwards.
Initially she had told the magistrate that she wanted to be referred to by her maiden name but changed her mind later on.
Upon being asked why she changed her mind, she said it was “for [her] grandchildren”.
Gisèle told the court: “When you look at me you think she’s a strong woman, but inside she’s a heap of ruins.
“The facade is strong, inside it’s not the same.”
Recounting the moment he allegedly confessed to taking pictures under women’s skirts, Gisèle said: “We are in the kitchen, he sat down and broke down in tears. I didn’t understand.”
He allegedly told her he had “done something silly” and said he’d been caught “filming under women’s skirts”.
She continued: “I said I forgive you, we’ve never had any problems in 50 years. But there won’t be a next time, otherwise I’ll leave.
“He said ‘I’m not going to do it again’. I trusted it as our relationship was based on trust for the past 50 years.”
Gisèle also recounted the moment she first entered the police station for questioning in what she thought was a “formality”.
She told the judge that she was asked by cops to “describe [her] husband” to which she responded that he was a “well-intentioned and a nice guy.”
Gisèle then said: “I was told to remove my mask and the policeman said ‘I’m going to tell you something you won’t like.'”
In her testimony, Gisèle revealed how her husband would apparently take pictures of her, including when she would leave the bathroom.
She said she became annoyed by the constant photo-taking and asked her husband to stop, to which he allegedly replied: “You should be pleased that after 50 years your husband still wants to take photos of you.”
Gisèle has insisted that the trial take place in public so the full facts of the case emerge.
Yesterday she was upset by difficult questions asked by defence lawyers with her three children leaving the courtroom in disgust.
“Of course she was offended,” said Antoine Camus, her second lawyer.
“She 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!'”
Gisèle’s husband, Dominique Pélicot, 71, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty following his trial at Vaucluse Criminal Court.
He and 51 other male defendants are charged with “aggravated rape” following multiple videoed attacks on Gisèle Pélicot, 72.
He is said to have then filmed the horrid attacks over nine years between 2011 and 2020.
On Tuesday he reportedly answered “yes” when asked if he was guilty of the accusations against him.
But the horrific case may never have come to light had Pélicot not been arrested in 2020 in a supermarket in Carpentras for filming up the skirts of other customers.
When police searched his camera phone, and equipment kept at his home, they found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse.
Alleged rapists involved in the case include civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers.
Yesterday the French court heard that in some of the heinous footage Pélicot allegedly takes turns with three other men to rape his wife in one single incident.
The instances of the horrific abuse sometimes lasted as long as six hours and alleged drugged victim Ms Pélicot could be heard snorting and breathing heavily in clips, the court was told.
I’m convinced I was drugged, but he’ll never admit it”
Caroline Durian
The court in Avignon also heard yesterday that Pélicot once accused his wife of infidelity when she discovered she had a sexually transmitted disease.
Ms Pélicot allegedly told her husband she needed treatment for an unexplained sexual illness – to which he suggested she’d been having affairs.
He reportedly asked her: “So, what are you doing with your days?”
On Tuesday, it emerged that the couple’s child – Caroline Darian – was pictured with no clothes on, almost certainly while drugged.
Mr Pélicot kept the images in a computer file entitled “Around my daughter, naked,” the court heard.
When Presiding Judge Roger Arata began reading out details of the pictures, Ms Darian – who was in the public gallery – collapsed in tears, and had to leave the court building for around 20 minutes.
She said she was “haunted by the fear” that her father may have invited men to rape her too, adding: “I’m convinced I was drugged, but he’ll never admit it.”
Gisele described the moment her children found out about the allegations that her husband had drugged her before organising rapes to the court.
She said: “When I told my daughter, she screamed like a wild beast. I will never forget this.
“When I told my sons about this, I don’t think they really understood, they were withdrawn and didn’t react much. I think they were in a state of shock. They said ‘don’t say such silly things’.
“That evening, the children rang all the time saying don’t disappear – they were worried I might die.”
The family home, in Mazan, some 20 miles from Avignon, allegedly became a crime scene over at least a decade, when streams of men were invited to attack Ms Pélicot.
Her husband is said to have used an online libertine platform to contact them between 2011 and 2020.
Detectives have listed a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified.
They are all being tried alongside Mr Pélicot , a former employee at French utility company, EDF (Electricity of France).
One of 51 accused said he thought that the presence of cameras made the rapes legal, the court heard.
Judge Arata said the unnamed man told police: “It couldn’t have been anything bad because it was all filmed.”
Another defendant told detectives he thought Ms Pélicot was “play-acting at being asleep,” as part of a libertine fantasy.
“The victim was not asleep, but unconscious, which explains why the incident lasted so long,’ said the Judge.
Ms Pélicot, a frail mother-of-three, was supported by her two adult sons as she remained in the public gallery on Tuesday, the second day of the trial.
Pélicot was allegedly a multiple rapist who moved his family from greater Paris in 1991, and later allegedly set up the sex ring.
It involved advertising on a site for ‘partners’ on an online forum called ‘Without Her Knowing’.
Participants would discuss performing acts on unwitting partners, and then film their depravity, before storing the videos on a USB drive dubbed “Abuses”.
In Pélicot’s case, the data eventually fell into the hand of police, who confirmed it enabled them to identify the 92 cases of rape.
Of the 72 men involved, 51 aged between 26 and 73 were identified and arrested by the police.
Mr Pélicot is said to have sedated his wife by putting tablets of Temesta – a powerful anxiolytic – into her evening dinner.
He then invited strangers from the online forum into the couple’s bedroom, so that his wife could be raped while unconscious.
All were told to wash their hands, and not to wear aftershave, so she would not sense they were strangers.
In a separate case, Mr Pélicot has been charged with raping and murdering a 23-year-old estate agent in Paris in 1991.
Women's Aid has this advice for victims and their families:
If you are a victim of domestic abuse, SupportLine is open Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from 6pm to 8pm on 01708 765200. The charity’s email support service is open weekdays and weekends during the crisis – messageinfo@supportline.org.uk.
Women’s Aid provides a live chat service – available weekdays from 8am-6pm and weekends 10am-6pm.
You can also call the freephone 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Helpline on 0808 2000 247.
