The trial of a Frenchman accused of drugging his wife and inviting more than 80 strangers into their family home to rape her restarts today, with the victim’s sons set to take the stand and give testimony.
Courageous Gisele Pelicot has bravely waved her right to anonymity so that the world can hear the depth of depravity her husband of 50 years sank to in order to satisfy his twisted sexual desires.
The case, heard in the town of Avignon in France’s Provence, has appalled anyone who has listened to how former electrical engineer Dominique Pelicot abused his wife over a decade.
Madame Pelicot, 72, last week faced down the 51 men – including her husband – accused of her rape, all of whom were stuffed into the Vaucluse Criminal Court each day as proceedings continued.
Now, David and Florian Pelicot will each tell how the terrible betrayal of their father Dominique shattered a once happy and close-knit family.
David and Florian Pelicot enter the courtroom on the morning of Monday, September 9
Courageous Gisele Pelicot has bravely waved her right to anonymity so that the world can hear the depth of depravity her husband of 50 years sank to in order to satisfy his twisted sexual desires
Gisele Pelicot, 72, arrives at court in Avignon, France
The Pelicots’ daughter Caroline gave evidence in a 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 unconscious and then raped by strangers as she laid motionless on the marital bed, while her husband watched on, recording the abuse on camera for his own personal pleasure.
She told the court: ‘I was subjected on the altar of vice. It’s a dead woman on a bed. This isn’t a bedroom, it’s an operating theatre. They treat me like a garbage bag, a rag doll. These aren’t sex scenes, these are rape scenes, it unbearable.’
In her evidence, 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 his crimes.
Her agony was compounded when detectives discovered 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 has heard that Pelicot’s perversion was only discovered after he was arrested for taking photos up women’s skirts at 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 discovered 20,000 homemade films and photographs of men he met on the internet raping his wife dating back to 2011.
Detectives traced 50 of some 84 men that Pelicot had met on a now defunct website and invited to his home to carry out the abuse.
Madame Pelicot, 72, last week faced down the 51 men – including her husband – accused of her rape
Madame Pelicot, 72, relived the trauma that she experienced when police investigator showed her graphic films of her being raped repeatedly by her husband Dominique and more than 80 strangers while she was unconscious
Madame Pelicot is determined that the public knows that she played no part in her husband’s warped sexual fantasies that he played out at their picturesque chalet home in the Provence village of Mazan (pictured)
They discovered that Pelicot routinely put powerful sedatives in his wife’s drink and food to render her unconscious for when her abusers arrived at the family home under cover of darkness.
Pelicot urged the men to sneak into the modest country chalet and undress in the kitchen to leave no trace.
Then, he turned on the camera and filmed as each man inflicted their terrible abuse on his wife, before meticulously filing and cataloguing the home moves under various skin-crawling titles.
The men, all from the Provence area of the south of France, are aged between 26 and 73 and include a fireman, a nurse, a civil servant, a plumber, a soldier and a journalist.
Detective traced 50 of these men and together with Pelicot, charged them all with rape.
Some 16 of the accused, including Pelicot, have admitted the offence.
But 35 maintain they are innocent, with one man telling police he believed Madame Pelicot had consented as her husband was present.
Pelicot faces up to 20 years in jail. The other men face shorter sentences if found guilty.
The trial is set to last until December.
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