In November 2020, while French authorities were investigating Dominique Pelicot for taking photos up women's skirts at a supermarket in southeastern France, they made a horrifying discovery on the 71-year-old man's computer. In a folder entitled "abuses" were thousands of photos and videos of Pelicot and other men—complete strangers—raping his then-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, while she was unconscious. In total, police counted 20,000 images and found that over 80 men had raped Pelicot between 2011 and 2020. Prior to the investigation, Gisèle had no idea.
Now, Gisèle is telling her own heartbreaking side of the story for the first time in a harrowing trial she decided should be public to raise awareness of sexual violence and expose the identities of her perpetrators. Dominique, who has already admitted to raping his wife, stands accused of inviting scores of other men—with ages ranging from 26 and 74—he met on a now-defunct message board called “Without their knowledge” to sexually assault her without protection while she was unconscious. The couple were married for nearly 50 years and share three children, two sons and a daughter.
“I speak for all women who are drugged and don’t know about it, I do it on behalf of all women who will perhaps never know,” Gisèle said in court on Thursday, two days into the trial. During her testimony, Gisèle recalled years of inexplicable memory lapses, hair loss, and weight loss. She feared that she was developing Alzheimer’s or another serious illness—all the while her former husband was plying her with drugs, inviting strangers into their home to rape her, and prolifically documenting her assaults.
“Frankly, these are scenes of horror for me,” she said of the photos and footage. “They treat me like a rag doll.” Among the men allowed to assault Gisèle was a man who was HIV positive. Though Dominique was aware of this, he still let the man to rape her six times.
“Luckily I didn’t catch it. But not once did Mr. Pelicot say to himself, ‘I’ve gone too far,'” she said in court. “He showed no pity, no pity at all.” Regardless, Gisèle did test positive for four other sexually transmitted diseases.
“Inside me, it is a scene of devastation,” she said. “I no longer have an identity...I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself.” Immediately after Gisèle learned she had been repeatedly raped, she tearfully told the court that she considered suicide: "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.'"
All the more horrifying was Pelicots' daughter's testimony. Last week, Caroline Darian took the stand and said she, too, was unknowingly drugged and photographed without her clothes by her father. During authorities' search, they found multiple photos of a sleeping Darian in a folder entitled: “Around my daughter, naked.” In court, Darian testified that she was shown the photos and felt strongly that she was drugged in at least one of them. Dominque has not yet admitted to drugging Darian.
“I realized right away I was drugged in that photo,” Darian said, according to the New York Times. She also referred to him as "likely one of the worst sexual criminals in past 20 years." His daughters-in-law also revealed during testimony that he had photographed them from a private bathroom while they were unclothed without their consent, and he was once overheard prompting his underage granddaughter to pose naked for him after she asked him for a toy in a store.
This week, Dominque was expected to take the stand, but, according to his lawyers, has been hospitalized for treatment for what could be a bladder infection or colic. In pre-trial interviews with a psychologist, Annabelle Montagne, Dominique blamed his wife for his behavior.
"My wife and I had a discussion about swinging but she didn't agree so I drugged her," she recalled him telling her without shame. Montagne went on to say that while Pelicot said he loved his wife, "he sees his partner as an object to satisfy his sexual and narcissistic needs. His wife is then a partial object and no longer an object of total love."
In a statement to the press, his attorney, Beatrice Zavarro, claimed he will be back in court as soon as he's treated.
"Mr Pelicot is not trying to shirk his responsibility, he will not shirk his responsibility," Zavarro said.
The trial is set to continue until December.
