The Most Disturbing Testimony From the Gisèle Pelicot Trial
When Gisèle Pelicot first started losing time, she feared a serious illness: She would randomly experience “total blackouts,” which left her unable to remember whole nights and days. Her hair began to fall out, she began shedding pounds, and eventually she became convinced she had “the beginnings of Alzheimer’s or a brain tumor,” the 71-year-old told a court in Avignon, France, last month. Her husband of nearly 50 years — Dominique Pelicot, whom she then considered the love of her life — drove her to appointments with specialists, though Gisèle wouldn’t discover the real cause until 2020, when Dominique was arrested after attempting to upskirt several women at a local grocery store. Searching his devices, police discovered a trove of some 20,000 videos and photos documenting repeated assaults on an unconscious woman, who turned out to be Gisèle. Dominique subsequently admitted to running a confounding scheme out of the couple’s bedroom: Having crushed sedatives into Gisèle’s food and drink, he would invite strangers he’d met online into their home to rape her, filming and neatly labeling the encounters for his archives.
Dominque has been charged with aggravated rape, drugging, and the violation of his wife’s privacy as well as his daughter’s and daughter-in-law’s: Alongside the images of Gisèle, police also found illicit images of the other women in his archives. While Dominique has insisted that he never touched his daughter, he has pleaded guilty on all counts pertaining to his wife. Now, 50 of the more than 90 men suspected of assaulting Gisèle are on trial, most of them facing charges of aggravated rape and the possibility of 20 years in prison.
For the most part, the accused have denied raping Gisèle, even as the court watches them on video, plainly performing sex acts on an unresponsive woman. Overwhelmingly, they have insisted that Dominique told them that his wife was a willing participant in a kinky game, indicating that they didn’t think to ask Gisèle or didn’t see anything strange about her being passed out. Many suggested that if the husband gave consent, then it couldn’t be rape. Gisèle, who has listened to each of her alleged abusers attempt to explain himself in court, doesn’t see it that way. Calling the men “degenerates,” she observed that none of them thought to check the facts with her. “When they see a woman sleeping on her bed, no one thought to ask themselves a question? Don’t they have brains?” she said, according to The Guardian. “When does a husband decide for his wife?”
Below, key testimony from each week of the trial.
How did so many men become involved in Dominique Pelicot’s scheme?
As detailed in court, Dominique found his candidates on the now-defunct online forum coco.gg, a platform involved in tens of thousands of crimes before French authorities finally shuttered it in June. He would typically message prospective participants in a chat room called “À son insu,” or “without her knowledge,” and explain that he and his wife like to engage in role-play: She would pretend to be asleep while a stranger had sex with her and he would film it so that they could watch the tape together later. Dominique’s chat history suggests he would sometimes get more explicit, telling his targets that he would sedate Gisèle, and even using the word “rape.” The ground rules he set for the men’s visits might also have suggested she wasn’t aware what was happening: When the accused arrived at the Pelicot home, Dominique made them strip before entering the couple’s bedroom. He forbid them from wearing cologne and told them they couldn’t show up smelling like smoke, evidently because any unusual scents might provoke Gisèle’s suspicion later on. He made them speak quietly, and often had them wait nearby until his wife had passed out.
In his testimony, Dominique claimed the men he solicited knew what they were getting into. “Today I maintain that I am a rapist, like those in this room,” he told the court, according to the New York Times. “They all knew her condition before they came, they knew everything. They cannot say otherwise.” Asking forgiveness from his wife for the “unforgivable,” he also suggested there was a silver lining to his documentation of every crime. “It was perversion, vice, but it was also an outstanding means of helping me remember certain people,” he explained of his footage, according to a local media report. Because of his recordings, he claimed, “we could find all those who participated.” All of whom, he added, came to his home of their own volition.
What have the men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot said in court?
Testimony from the accused began after Dominique himself took the stand. The first to speak was Jean-Pierre Marechal, who isn’t accused of raping Gisèle but has been jailed for carrying out Dominique’s blueprint on his own wife, Cilia. According to France24, Marechal told the court that he first met Dominique on coco.gg, where Dominique detailed his scheme and, eventually, asked to rape Marechal’s wife. The 63-year-old didn’t immediately accept but reportedly suggested that Dominique coaxed him into it. “If I had not met Mr. Pelicot, I would have never committed this act. He was reassuring, like a cousin,” he testified, according to the Global News. Dominique allegedly supplied the tranquilizers and would rape Cilia ten times, while Marechal watched. (Marechal is himself accused of raping, or trying to rape, Cilia on 12 occasions.) On what turned out to be their final meeting, Cilia reportedly woke up while Dominique was in the room, prompting the two men to sever communications.
Like Dominique — who testified to having been sexually assaulted at age 9, and made to witness a rape several years later — Marechal told the court he’d been sexually abused as a child. “We experienced terrible things from my father,” he said, according to CBS News. “My mother tried to protect us but she drank.” Like Dominique, Marechal also insisted he’d had a “happy life” with Cilia, who has not divorced him. “I regret my actions. I love my wife,” he told the court, adding that he hoped for a “tough punishment.”
“I’m in jail and I deserve it,” he said. “What I did is appalling. I’m a criminal and a rapist.”
One man considered going to the police, but “then life resumed its course; the next day I went to work very early, and that was that.”
After Marechal, the court heard from several other defendants. Lionel R., a 44-year-old father of three, said Dominique came to him, allegedly making “a rather unusual proposal to have sex with his wife.” Lionel R. said the invitation was issued online: “He tells me that he’s in a relationship,” the grocery-store worker said of Pelicot, according to France24. “He tells me that she’ll be asleep, talks to me about sleeping pills, tells me that she takes them or that he gives them to her, it’s not clear. I’m not asking too many questions, I was convinced it was a game at the time.” When he showed up at the Pelicot home in December 2018, he allegedly proceeded to rape Gisèle for half an hour while Dominique directed the scene in whispers, snapping to only when Gisèle stirred and Dominique “asked me to leave the room,” he said, per France 24. “I realized that there was a big problem in that she mustn’t wake up in front of me. I should have left and reacted much sooner.”
“I never told myself: ‘I will rape that woman,’” he told the court, according to The Guardian. But “since I never obtained Mrs. Pelicot’s consent, I have no choice but to accept the facts.” Lionel R. claimed that he “never imagined that she might not be part of this game,” but admitted he should have “checked that she was okay with it” or simply left when he saw she was unconscious. “I’m guilty of rape,” he said, before apologizing to Gisèle. “I can only imagine the nightmare you’ve lived through,” he said, “and I am part of this nightmare.”
A 74-year-old ex-fireman, Jacques C., reportedly told the court that he visited coco.gg in service of his “libertine” lifestyle. According to France 24, he testified that Dominique told him Gisèle would be drugged when he arrived at the couple’s home in February 2020. “I had this idea of a promiscuous couple, where the wife might be asleep, perhaps because she was a shy person,” he reportedly said. But Jacques C. claimed that he quickly knew something was off about the situation, because Gisèle showed “no reaction” when he “caressed” her naked body. He said that he performed oral sex on Gisèle but that “Dominique asked me to leave the room” when she appeared to respond. That, he said, “was a relief for me, so I got dressed. When he came back I told him I did not want to be there.” As he left, Jacques C. told the court, he considered going to the police, but “then life resumed its course; the next day I went to work very early, and that was that.”
“I am not a rapist. That’s too much for me to bear.”
The second group of men to testify gave similar accounts. Mathieu D. acknowledged he’d raped Gisèle, telling the court he only “realized” the encounter at the Pelicot home hadn’t been consensual when he was arrested, the AFP reports. He said Dominique told him he would give his wife drugs to make her sleep, so that the couple could “later watch the video together.” Another, Fabien S., said that “in the excitement,” he “didn’t pay attention” to the fact that Gisèle was unconscious, according to local media. Reportedly an alcoholic who was formerly unhoused, Fabien S. said he was a frequent user of coco.gg when he first encountered Dominique. When he arrived at their home in August 2018, he testified that he was “in the mood” and didn’t think Gisèle was drugged. He stayed for a quarter of an hour before leaving in a hurry, because he thought she “was going to wake up,” according to the local report. Nonetheless, he claimed he thought Gisèle was complicit in the idea. “I recognize the facts, but I didn’t come to rape her,” he reportedly said. “I wasn’t aware.”
Husamettin D. testified that although Dominique told him his wife had a sleep kink but liked to swing, he was still surprised by her state when he walked into the couple’s bedroom. When he began touching her, Husamettin D. said, she didn’t move at all. “I said, ‘She’s dead, your wife,’” he told the court, according to the AFP. Dominique then “said, ‘No, you’re imagining it,’” allegedly penetrating her so that “she lifted up her head a little,” Husamettin said. After that, Husamettin apparently continued for another 30 minutes before he heard her snoring and left.
Husamettin initially denied having raped Gisèle, reportedly saying he received a message on coco.gg reading, “I am indeed his wife, and I agree to welcome you.”
“I am not a rapist,” he told the court, per the AFP. “That’s too much for me to bear. It’s her husband. I never thought that guy could do that to his own wife.” Husamettin only changed his tune after one of the judges reminded him that French law defines the crime as penetration “through violence, constraint, threat or surprise,” but according to the Courthouse News Service, he also called himself a victim.
One man admitted to a “hatred of women.”
In the first week of October, a third round of defendants came before the court. The group of seven men uniformly failed to demonstrate “empathy” for the victim, according to the expert psychiatrist who testified on their character profiles. Per French media, while they may have shared a sense of “guilt” and “concern” as to their consequences for their personal lives, the men tended to blame Dominique for the rapes, rather than themselves. That prompted the psychiatrist to identify a unifying pattern among the accused: “Narcissism, a lack of self-confidence, a lack of empathy,” according to local news. And in the case of one man, Adrien L., an explicit hatred of women, as he explained during his testimony.
Per French media, 34-year-old Adrien L. is the youngest of the accused and figured in Dominique’s rape videos as early as 2014. Depicted in the local report as a sort of golden boy gone astray, he followed his father into the family business, where he “worked like a dog” for his father’s recognition, only to find himself continually “pushed … aside.” When he was 18, Adrien L. discovered a 16-year-old girl he was dating was pregnant. His parents pushed for a paternity test, which revealed that Adrien L. was not the father. Thus was born his self-avowed “hatred of women.”
After that, he testified, he lost all interest in women, but he didn’t stop dating them. He eventually became a parent and reportedly threatened the mother of his son, saying he would hurt their child. And the Pelicot trial marks his second court appearance on charges of sexual abuse this year: He recently received a 14-year sentence for raping and assaulting three of his exes. According to local media, he partially blamed his sexual aggression on abuse he says he suffered as an 8-year-old, when he said he was “touched” by a cousin whom his father prized.
In addition to Adrien L., this group of defendants also included Simone M., a father of five who claims a history of alcohol and sex addiction as well as sexual abuse in his childhood. According to France Bleu, Simone M. was the man Gisèle once saw in her home, ostensibly looking at her husband’s bicycle. Per local media, Simone M. testified that when he came to the Pelicot house, Dominique directed him in what to do but then told him to “hurry up and leave” before he had penetrated Gisèle, allegedly because Dominique hadn’t sedated her heavily enough. Although he admitted to never having gotten Gisèle’s consent, Simone M. insisted that he “wasn’t a rapist” and believed she was “taking part in the game.” Similarly, Redouan E., a nurse, said he wasn’t aware Dominique had drugged his wife, and denied having committed rape: “I didn’t force anyone, I didn’t surprise anyone,” he said, per France Bleu; indeed, he claimed to have been Dominique’s victim. “I was in imminent danger,” he told the court, alleging that he felt too frightened of Dominique to tell him no. “He reduced me to his instrument.”
Two men — Jean T. and Thierry Pa. — purport to have no memory of what happened at the Pelicots’, alleging that Dominique gave them drugged drinks upon their arrival. Dominique denied offering his guests any beverages, but according to local media, Jean T. testified that his last memory inside the Pelicots’ home, post-soda, was of Dominique having sex with Gisèle; the next thing he knew, he said, he was back in his car with no idea what happened in between. (In the video footage, Jean T. can reportedly be seen giving a thumbs-up as he abuses Gisèle.) According to France Bleu, Thierry Pa. similarly claimed to remember nothing about the events of his visit, beyond drinking the whiskey and coke Dominique gave him. Both men deny having committed rape. Another defendant, Thierry Po., was taken into custody in November 2022, for the possession of over 1,000 pornographic photos and videos involving children and animals. Of his involvement in the Pelicot case, local media says he told the court: “Dominique told me do this, do that. It didn’t work. There were moans, she moved — for me, she wasn’t sleeping.”
And then there was Jérôme V., who made six trips to the Pelicots’ home between February and June 2020, while the rest of the country was under COVID lockdown. Though he admitted to the six rapes “in their entirety” and said he was completely aware of the situation, local media reports that he blamed his “weak” character: a sex addiction and an inability to say no to Dominique, he told the court. Jérôme V. further claimed to have been a childhood victim of physical and psychological violence by his parents and classmates, and as a result, to “maybe have more difficulty than the average person in understanding the suffering of others,” he testified. He also said he was “very touched” by Gisèle’s testimony, and “by the little scrap of a woman that she is.”
“I felt even worse for hurting someone so pure,” he added.
Dominique said he sought “a perverted accomplice to rape my sleeping wife.”
In the trial’s sixth week, a group of five men came before the judges. According to France Bleu, two of them — Didier S. and Patrick A. — told the court that they were gay and that Dominique had lured them to his home with promises of a solo encounter. In Patrick A.’s case, Dominique reportedly told him what he was after in the very first Skype exchange: “a perverted accomplice to abuse my sleeping wife.” France Bleu reports that Patrick A. agreed to Dominique’s request “to please him,” and that in doing so, he’d made “a big mistake.” Didier S., meanwhile, told the court that in the moment, he hadn’t seen anything “serious or reprehensible” about the situation. “I believed what monsieur told me,” he testified, adding that he still doesn’t understand why Dominique did what he did. “It’s not me, madame, who should be blamed but your husband,” he addressed himself to Gisèle, per France Bleu.
Once again, the accused largely claimed to have been unaware that Gisèle never gave consent. Karim S., for example: France Bleu reports that, in his early message with Dominique, the latter said he would sedate his wife. Karim S. apparently told investigators that he trusted Dominique, and simply thought the couple were enjoying “a bit of a sick game.” (Incidentally, police also found child pornography on his computer, though he claimed to have downloaded it accidentally, while looking for actual adult content.) Upon reflection, Karim S. now believes that he should have been more “vigilant.”
Some of his co-defendants arguably exercised even less introspection, one — Jean-Marc L. — having told the court that Dominique “impressed” him, and that he was just “obeying orders” when he had sex with Gisèle. Initially, he believed himself the target of a conspiracy in which she was complicit; according to France Bleu, he has since apologized while still maintaining his innocence. Similarly, Vincent C. told the court that he “recognize[s] the acts, but not the facts,” of the rape, per France Bleu. Vincent C. went to the Pelicot house twice, telling Dominique after the first time that he found the setup “bizarre.” But Dominique reportedly replied, “No, we watched the video and she liked it,” which was enough for Vincent C. “That closed the door on any doubts,” he told the court. According to Le Monde, Vincent C. (who has a previous conviction for abusing an ex) told the court he was “looking for a fuck buddy,” and doesn’t “think at times like that.” Per France Bleu, he said he believed the couple were engaged in a game up until the moment he read about the case in the papers. At that point, he said, he “didn’t have the courage to go to the police.” Confronted in court with video of one of the assaults he’d committed, Vincent C. reiterated that Dominique’s explanation had been enough for him. Gisèle reportedly stood up and walked out at that point, exclaiming, “I can’t stand it!”
Several men have claimed to be “victims” of Dominique.
The fifth group of the accused included Mohamed R., a man who in 1999 was convicted of raping his 14-year-old daughter, according to France Bleu. As local media reports, he denied the allegations and unsuccessfully attempted to appeal, claiming he’d been set up by several ex-girlfriends and the children they’d had together. In court, the judges heard Mohamed R.’s “chaotic” life story, from the abuse he allegedly suffered in childhood and repeated on his own kids to the development of a drug addiction. Mohamed R. reportedly visited the second home belonging to the Pelicots’ daughter overnight on May 6, 2019. He claims Dominique told him that Gisèle, unconscious, was drunk, and in court, recalled that having sex with her was “like making love to a corpse.” According to France Bleu, he considers himself “as much a victim” as Gisèle.
What has Gisèle said about the trial?
Throughout the proceedings, Gisèle has largely sat calmly in the courtroom, listening to the men defend their actions and watching them assault her on tape. But in the trial’s earliest weeks, she gave testimony of her own. “I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” she said in the beginning. The accused, she continued, “regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.”
Her husband’s account, she added, was “difficult … to hear.”
“For 50 years, I lived with a man whom I wouldn’t have imagined for a single second could do these things. I had total confidence in this man.” Because of these “acts of barbarity,” she has said, “I no longer have an identity … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself.”
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