Pensioner ‘drugged wife before raping her with three other men’, trial hears

A French court heard that a pensioner who allegedly drugged his wife so she could be raped nearly 100 times by 72 men over the space of 10 years also recorded himself taking part in the rape with up to three other men.

Dominique Pélicot, 71, is alleged to have used an online forum to recruit strangers to visit their home, according to police who found chats on a site called coco.fr, which they have since shut down.

The court heard this morning that some of the footage showed Pélicot assaulting his wife with three other men – with some instances of abuse lasting nearly six hours.

It was also revealed that his former wife and victim, Gisele P, had contracted a sexually transmitted disease, and when she told her husband, he suggested she had been unfaithful.

Gisele has ‘no recollection’ of the ten years of abuse, which she discovered in 2020 after police found hundreds of images of her on her husband’s phone.

She was seen unconscious, mostly in a foetal position, in the pictures and videos alleged to show dozens of rapes at the couple’s home in Mazan, near Avignon, France.

Gisele could have opted for a trial behind closed doors, but ‘that’s what her attackers would have wanted’, the court heard.

Yesterday, the defendant’s daughter, Caroline Darian, left the courtroom after the judge mentioned her father’s computer had nude photographs of her.

She told Le Parisien: ‘I’m convinced I was drugged, but he’ll never admit it.’

When Presiding Judge Roger Arata began reading out details of the pictures, Ms Darian – who was in the public gallery – collapsed in tears, and had to leave the court building for around 20 minutes.

Ms Darian, now in her 40s, has already written a book about the case called ‘And I stopped calling you Daddy’, which the Judge quoted from in court.

She also said she was ‘haunted’ by the fear that her father may have also allowed men to rape her after a picture of her in ‘someone else’s underwear’ was found on his computer.

Alleged rapists involved in the case include civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers.

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