Looking for a rewarding hobby at the end of their working days, some men take up gardening or golf.
Dominique Pelicot came up with another way to spend his free time in the Provençal village of Mazan: he invited other men to rape his sleeping wife, Gisele.
With stunning nonchalance, the so-called Monster of Mazan offered this reason yesterday before the court when explaining why he committed the most terrible act of treason.
During his working life – as an electrician and real estate agent – he was always “very busy”, he said, but after retiring at age 60 he felt “completely idle” and began visiting perverted internet chat rooms, where he came up with the idea for his twisted plan.
In one such Internet foray, some 13 years ago, a male nurse had posted a compromising photograph of his unconscious wife and boasted of drugging her for sex, while describing the type of tranquilizers he used and the most effective dosage.
Shortly after, Pelicot copied the ruse by slipping the same pills into Gisele’s dinner, taking the perverted game to even greater extremes by inviting other men to rape her.
The Avignon court heard how his 10-year campaign of rape endangered Ms Pelicot’s life. In a state of stupor, she suffered a car accident and could have drowned in the swimming pool at her villa in Mazan, her lawyer said.
Pelicot also allowed an HIV-positive man to rape her six times without using a condom.
In a court sketch, Mr. Pélicot appears in the Avignon courthouse on September 11.
Gisele Pelicot arrives at the criminal court in Avignon, southern France, on September 17
Dominique Pelicot, 71, who is on trial for organizing the rape of his wife
As he witnessed this “spectacle of decay” and accompanied her to medical appointments for unexplained memory lapses, Ms. Pelicot’s lawyer pressed him to consider stopping the rapes.
“I saw her suffer, but the addiction was stronger,” she replied, claiming that the HIV-positive man had shown her a false negative test result.
He added: “I betrayed his trust. I should have stopped much earlier, or never even started. But it was like I was dragging someone behind me and I couldn’t stop.”
Yesterday, Mrs Pelicot listened in obvious disbelief as the father of her three children admitted to what another lawyer called “one of the worst crimes committed in France”.
For four torturous years since his arrest, she had waited for him to come before her and tell her why he had allowed dozens of strangers to rape her. This was her day of reckoning.
Dominique Pélicot is accused of recruiting men online to assault his wife repeatedly over a 10-year period
Yet if Pelicot was daunted by the prospect of facing the woman he had delivered into the hands of like-minded deviants, if he felt remorseful about allowing them to use her “like a garbage bag,” he had an uncanny way of showing it.
Yes, there was the occasional sob as he pleaded – surely in vain – with his wife and family to “forgive the unforgivable”. Yet most of his sympathy seemed to be for himself, as he offered a litany of excuses for his downfall and strove to ensure that whatever punishment he faced, his 50 co-defendants would be condemned with him.
Having delayed the trial to seek treatment for a urinary tract infection, Pelicot limped into the stifling Avignon courtroom with a cane and wrapped in a grey woollen jumper and white scarf.
Unlike his wife, who stood proudly before the five judges as she gave her testimony, he was allowed to recline in a chair in the dock, resting a microphone on his belly.
“Good morning, Mr. President, and hello to everyone,” he began his speech, sounding like an elderly talk show host. “Yes, I recognize the facts of the case in their entirety.”
Gisèle Pélicot arrives at the court in Avignon, France, on the eighth day of her trial
Caroline Darian (C) arrives at the trial of her mother’s ex-partner on September 11
Then, presumably to gain sympathy, he recounted a series of alleged traumas that had marred his formative years: walking into the bedroom while his brutal father tied his mother’s hands behind her back and abused her.
Being sexually assaulted by a hospital nurse when he was nine years old.
He witnessed his co-workers rape a disabled girl on a construction site when he was a 14-year-old apprentice.
“One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert,” he commented almost haughtily.
All these events were forgotten at the age of 17, when he met the ‘beautiful’ Giselle, he said.
‘I was crazy about her. She was what mattered most to me. I loved her hard for 40 years and I loved her badly for ten years. But I will always love her.
I’ll die like this. I’ve ruined everything. I’ve lost everything and I have to pay.
As for his sex life, Pelicot admitted that he was “always too demanding” and “had trouble doing without” – problems that worsened after they retired to Mazan and his wife often returned to the Paris area alone to look after their grandchildren.
Gisele’s daughter Caroline said last week that Pelicot was “one of the biggest sexual predators” of recent years.
Dominique Pelicot can be seen in this court sketch on the right.
This image shows a black and white facial reconstruction of a younger Dominique P.
“There was a terrible lack when she was away,” he said, claiming that it was then that his “addiction” took over and “everything went horribly wrong.”
That’s when he thought about emulating the nurse who had introduced him to “chemical submission” in the Internet chat room, he said. “She showed me things I thought were impossible… and it just kept escalating.”
Pelicot admitted that he derived some pleasure from filming the rapes, but said he did so mainly to avoid being blackmailed by the men he invited to his home.
However, towards the end, his debauchery began to backfire. Some of the men followed his wife when she went shopping.
“If you don’t let me (rape her), I will go and talk to her during the day,” he said while a man threatened him.
By then, Pelicot said, he was so desperate that he considered committing suicide by crashing into a tree.
Instead, he deliberately allowed himself to be arrested for taking upskirt photos of women shopping, knowing that the police would investigate his affairs and discover the rapes.
A courtroom drawing shows Madame Pelicot taking the stand, facing her husband and the 50 other people accused of raping her.
Several defendants claim that Ms Pelicot was actually awake when they had sex with her and that they gave consent as part of a swingers game. Pelicot flatly denied this yesterday. “I’m a rapist like
All the accused in this room,
said.
He also denied a lawyer’s allegation that he was “trying to look like a superhero” in an act of “bravado” designed to save his wife’s reputation and, in doing so, “sacrifice” the other defendant.
‘I didn’t pick anyone up. They all agreed to come to my house. I didn’t put handcuffs on them to force them to come. The tripod (which he used to film the attacks) was in plain view of everyone.’
Pelicot said that during the four years he spent in prison awaiting trial, there were times when he came close to committing suicide. In fact, he attempted to take his own life after receiving a death threat from a fellow inmate (on Saturday, the Daily Mail revealed that a photo of a coffin had been slipped under his cell door).
‘Today I no longer want to die.
I want to fight, I want to prove myself, I want to educate myself in prison, which I couldn’t do when I was a child.
said.
The Monster of Mazan certainly found an eloquent answer when asked how he felt about being the protagonist of one of France’s biggest trials. “If it were a monument, then it would be a very sad monument, and
“I don’t invite anyone to visit me. I don’t have that pretension,” he said.
When the judge gave Ms. Pelicot a chance to say how his words made her feel, she said she found it all “difficult to hear.”
He left the room to loud applause from his fans.
Once the day of reckoning was over, Pelicot limped pathetically back to his cell.
Additional reporting by Rory Mulholland.