A civil engineer accused of raping the wife of the Monster of Avignon told a French court he “feels sad” for her.
Cyrille Delville, 54, a father of two, became the third of 50 men to testify in the ongoing sex trial that has shocked France.
Retired electrician Dominique Pelicot, 73, is accused of sedating and raping his wife Giselle at their home in the quiet village of Mazan during a nightmare that lasted ten years.
Delville, a father of two, was among dozens of men invited by Pelicot to rape Mrs Pelicot after being contacted through a now-closed swingers website called Coco.fr
The men include a retired firefighter, a journalist, a councillor and lorry drivers, and graphic videos of sexual acts performed on Ms Pelicot (who has waived her anonymity) have been played in court.
A defendant arrives in the courtroom on September 20 accompanied by a police officer.
Gisele Pelicot (pictured) spoke out again on Tuesday about being raped by dozens of men while heavily sedated.
A prison van arrives at the courtroom in Avignon on September 20
Delville admitted to raping her and his name emerged from devices police recovered from Pelicot’s home in 2020 when he was arrested for “upskirting” women at his local supermarket.
He told the court he had been seeing a counsellor since his arrest and that it had “helped to lighten his heart” as he “felt very sad for Ms Pelicot”.
Sobbing, Delville added: “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to shake this off. I can’t sleep. I have nightmares.”
Delville told the court that as a result of his involvement in the case, his wife, whom he had known for 32 years, had left him.
He told the court they had a “normal sex life” but then got bored and he started looking at pornographic websites and joined Coco.fr to “chat”.
Meanwhile, a woman whose skirt was lifted by Pelicot in September 2020 at her local supermarket spoke out for the first time in an interview with French television station BFMTV.
Dominique Pélicot is accused of recruiting men online to assault his wife repeatedly over a 10-year period
Gisele Pelicot, flanked by her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau, arrives in the courtroom on September 20.
Gisele Pelicot pictured in a skit with her daughter and her lawyer in court on Wednesday
Gisele Pelicot arrives at the courtroom in Avignon on September 20
Identified only as Nathalie, the mother of two described how she “didn’t buy a dress for two years” after the incident in Carpentras, a few minutes’ drive from Mazan.
She said: “He behaved like a miserable man, saying he had done nothing. He had the attitude of a victim.”
Nathalie said the first she knew what was happening was when a security guard approached her and told her what Pelicot had been doing to her and three other women.
She added: ‘It was a month later when I realised the magnitude of what I had been doing, I threw away the dress I was wearing, I couldn’t bear it, I was traumatised.
‘I didn’t wear a dress shopping for two years.’
In another development on Friday, the trial judge ruled that the press would also be prohibited from viewing graphic photographs and videos of Ms. Pelicot.
Gisele Pelicot’s daughter Caroline Darian arrives with her mother Gisele Pelicot at the Avignon court on Tuesday.
The assault took place in the southern French town of Mazan and was only discovered after the man was caught pulling down women’s skirts in a local supermarket, prompting officers to search his home.
Mr. Pélicot appears in court in Avignon on September 11
The public had previously been evacuated from the courtroom and an adjoining room before the screenings, but Judge Roger Arata ruled that only those directly involved could see them.
A local journalist wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that it was “regrettable” that he would no longer be able to “explain the essence of the case” to the public.
