The woman at the centre of France’s worst-ever rape case told a judge she was on the brink of taking her own life after learning she had been defiled by dozens of strangers when her husband drugged her and left her unconscious.
Gisele Pelicot, 72, told the court in Avignon how she wanted to ‘disappear’ when police revealed the dark truth to her after arresting her husband in late 2020.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, was initially arrested for taking pictures up the skirts of female shoppers in a supermarket.
But when police confiscated his computer they uncovered more than 20,000 images and videos of strangers abusing his snoring wife in a campaign of twisted abuse that lasted almost a decade.
‘I only wanted one thing and that was to disappear. I told myself: ”I am going to get in my car with my dog and end it all”,’ Madame Pelicot told the court yesterday, going on to recount how her adult children were terrified she was going to kill herself before they could reach her.
‘When I told my sons about this, I don’t think they really understood, they were withdrawn… I think they were in a state of shock.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.’
Madame Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Peyronnet, will take the stand today to give evidence and explain how Mr Pelicot betrayed his wife, children and grandchildren to satisfy his perverted fantasies.
Gisele Pelicot, 72, told the court in Avignon how she wanted to ‘disappear’ when police revealed the dark truth to her after arresting her husband in late 2020
Dominique Pelicot is accused of recruiting men online to assault his wife repeatedly over a decade until his arrest in 2020
The sons of Gisele Pelicot, Florian, right, David, left, and her daughter Caroline, centre, arrive in the Avignon court house, southern France, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024
The son of Gisele Pelicot, Florian (L) and her daughter Caroline Darian (R) leave the criminal court in Avignon, France, 05 September 2024
Caroline’s book entitled ‘And I Stopped Calling You Papa’ – published in 2022 under the pen name Caroline Darian – provides skin-crawling details of her father’s depravity and has already been quoted by the judge during the trial.
Mr Pelicot’s daughter explains across 176 pages the ways in which her father cruelly manipulated, abused and destroyed the physical and mental health of his wife Gisele before his dark deeds were eventually discovered in November 2020.
Darian’s book, released in 2022 roughly a year and a half after her father’s crimes were revealed, charts the destruction of the Pelicot family when Gisele’s health was inexplicably falling apart
She writes how her father ‘dressed Maman like a low-rent prostitute’ and forbade many of the men he invited to the family home from wearing a condom as they abused her unconscious mother – including one who even tested positive for HIV.
And she explained how she was confronted with the reality that she too had been drugged by her own dad, dressed in underwear and left in the foetal position as he snapped away with a camera.
Caroline fled the courtroom in tears on Tuesday after those images were discussed amid the trial.
Though some of the names were changed when the book was published, Caroline gives a horrendous account of how her father drugged her mother with powerful tranquillisers.
Writing about one incident in the summer of 2018, Caroline recalls how her brother went to visit their parents for an evening meal, only to see his mother practically falling asleep at the dinner table.
‘Only a few minutes after sitting down Maman was swaying in her chair as though she was drunk,’ Caroline quotes him as saying.
‘Suddenly her whole body was drained of energy, like a rag doll.’
‘It happens. It’s better if I take her to bed,’ his father was reported as saying, feigning the role of a concerned husband acting in his wife’s best interests.
‘In reality the cocktail of drugs, poured into her glass of rosé, was beginning to take effect,’ Caroline said.
She goes on to write that Mr Pelicot dared to suggest that his wife was having an affair when she complained of severe gynaecological issues and tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease.
Caroline claimed that when her mother told her husband she needed treatment for the unexplained illness, he asked her: ‘So, what are you doing with your days?’, accusing her of playing around while he was out playing boules or cycling in the foothills of Mont Ventoux.
She also explained how, despite inviting as many as 72 men into the family home to have their way with Madame Pelicot, her father never once asked for money or attempted to profit from the barbaric scheme.
‘Ultimate perversity… Father, who always had money problems, didn’t profit from Maman. He did it purely for his pleasure.’
Gisele Pelicot is pictured above as she left the court in Avignon, France, on September 5
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)
Mr Pelicot’s daughter Caroline has already provided in skin-crawling detail an extensive account of her father’s heinousness
Mr Pelicot broke down in tears in the dock yesterday as he listened to his wife, wearing an orange dress, a white blouse and a gold necklace, detail how they fell in love and started their married life together before her world ‘collapsed’ when the extent of his depravity was discovered.
She went on to admit that she had a short affair 14 years after marrying Mr Pelicot in 1973 but insisted they patched things up and shared a strong union, until police informed her of her husband’s deeds in 2020.
‘We had everything, we had a great life. I don’t understand how this could have happened,’ the 72-year-old told Judge Roger Arata.
‘We were not rich but we were happy.‘
Despite Madame Pelicot’s belief she was in a loving relationship, from 2011 until 2020 her husband orchestrated a campaign of abuse, drugging her and inviting dozens of men to rape her for his camera.
Judge Arata later asked Madame Pelicot if she suffered any problems after the decade of abuse, to which she replied that she was tested for HIV, adding: ‘I was diagnosed with four sexually transmitted diseases at the Versailles medical forensic unit.’
She did not contract HIV, despite being raped several times by a man who tested positive for the virus without a condom.
The judge also asked Madame Pelicot whether her husband had any ‘sexual desires’ that she didn’t want to participate in.
‘Once we went to a nightclub with another couple where there was a ‘swingers’ room’. But I didn’t want to get involved in that so we did not go into that room and we just stayed in the main nightclub,’ the mother-of-three replied.
Another judge asked Madame Pelicot whether she and her husband ever discussed filming their sexual intercourse.
She said: ‘I never agreed to Monsieur Pelicot filming us having sex. No the only time we talked about something like this was at the swingers’ room at the nightclub. I understood that he would have wanted to do it. But for me it was impossible.’
The judge told Madame Pelicot that Mr Pelicot has acknowledged his crimes, and asked her; ‘What do you feel about this?’
She replied: ‘Feelings of disgust. We had everything, we had a great life. I don’t understand how this could have happened.’
A court drawing shows Madame Pelicot taking the stand, facing her husband and the 50 others accused of raping her
Gisele Pelicot, 72, arrives at court in Avignon, France, on the morning of September 4
Madame Pelicot, who has three children and seven grandchildren, bravely waived her right to anonymity to make public details of the horrific betrayal her partner of 50 years had forced her to endure over ten years.
Mr Pelicot and 14 of his co-accused have admitted their part in France’s worst rape case.
But another 35 men – from all walks of life – deny that they forced themselves on Madame Pelicot while she was unconscious, claiming that she in some way consented.
Madame Pelicot’s lawyer asked her in court: ‘Some of the defendants admit the facts, others contest all the facts, and others confirm they were present but deny it was rape.
‘You caught four sexually transmitted diseases and were exposed to HIV six times. What have you got to say to people who claim you consented to all this?’
The brave mother-of-three replied: ‘All I have to say is, it’s an insult to my intelligence. These individuals were totally aware of what state I was in. I never knowingly took part in any of these things.
‘How can you even try and make people think that a woman would knowingly take part in all this?’
The shocking case is set to continue until December 20.
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