The trial of a Frenchman accused of drugging his wife and inviting more than 80 strangers to their family home to rape her resumes today, with the victim’s children set to take the stand and give evidence.
Brave Gisele Pelicot has bravely waived her right to anonymity so the world can hear the depths of depravity to which her husband of 50 years sank to satisfy his twisted sexual desires.
The case, which was heard in the city of Avignon in French Provence, has horrified anyone who has heard how former electrical engineer Dominique Pelicot abused his wife for a decade.
Last week, Madame Pelicot, 72, faced the 51 men – including her husband – accused of rape, all of whom were brought to the Vaucluse Criminal Court each day as proceedings continued.
Now, David and Florian Pelicot will each tell how their father Dominique’s terrible betrayal destroyed a once happy and united family.
David and Florian Pelicot enter the courtroom on the morning of Monday, September 9.
Brave Gisele Pelicot has bravely waived her right to anonymity so the world can hear the depths of depravity her husband of 50 years sank to in order to satisfy his twisted sexual desires.
Gisele Pelicot, 72, arrives at the court in Avignon, France
The Pelicots’ daughter, Caroline, gave harrowing testimony last week.
Dominique Pelicot is accused of recruiting men online to assault his wife repeatedly over a 10-year period
In a three-hour testimony last week, the grandmother of seven described the moment she learned from police officers how she was drugged into unconsciousness and then raped by strangers as she lay motionless in their marital bed, while her husband watched, recording the abuse on camera for his own personal pleasure.
She told the court: “I was subjected to the altar of vice. It’s like a dead woman in a bed. This is not a bedroom, it’s an operating theatre. I’m treated like a bag of rubbish, like a rag doll. These are not sex scenes, these are rape scenes, it’s unbearable.”
In her testimony, the couple’s only daughter, Caroline Peyronnet, told the court last week how her world fell apart when her mother called her to inform her of their crimes.
Her agony was compounded when detectives discovered that Mr Pelicot had also taken photographs of Caroline lying motionless on a bed in her mother’s underwear.
Madame Peyronnet, 45, described her father as “one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 years”.
The trial heard that Pelicot’s perversion was only discovered after he was arrested for taking photographs up women’s skirts in a supermarket near the couple’s home in the pretty village of Mazan, in the shadow of Mont Ventoux, in September 2020.
A police search of his computer uncovered 20,000 home movies and photographs of men he met on the internet raping his wife dating back to 2011.
Detectives tracked down 50 of the 84 men Pelicot had met on a now-defunct website and invited to her home to carry out the abuse.
Madame Pelicot, 72, last week faced the 51 men, including her husband, accused of raping her.
Madame Pelicot, 72, relived the trauma she experienced when a police investigator showed her graphic videos of her being repeatedly raped by her husband Dominique and more than 80 strangers while she was unconscious.
Madame Pelicot is determined that the public should know that she played no part in her husband’s twisted sexual fantasies which he played out in their picturesque chalet-house in the Provençal village of Mazan (pictured).
They discovered Pelicot routinely laced his wife’s food and drink with powerful sedatives to render her unconscious when his abusers arrived at the family home under cover of darkness.
Pelicot urged the men to sneak into the modest country house and undress in the kitchen so as not to leave a trace.
He then turned on the camera and filmed each man inflicting his horrific abuse on his wife, before meticulously filing and cataloguing the household’s movements under various chilling headings.
The men, all from the Provence region in southern France, are aged between 26 and 73 and include a firefighter, a nurse, a civil servant, a plumber, a soldier and a journalist.
The detective tracked down 50 of these men and, along with Pelicot, charged them all with rape.
Some 16 defendants, including Pelicot, have admitted the crime.
But 35 maintain they are innocent and one man told police he believed Madame Pelicot had given consent because her husband was present.
Pelicot faces up to 20 years in prison. The other men face shorter sentences if convicted.
The trial is scheduled to last until December.
