AVIGNON: A woman who was allegedly drugged by her now ex-husband so that she could be raped by other men while she was unconscious testified on Thursday (Sep 5) that her world collapsed when police uncovered the years of alleged abuse.
Speaking in a calm and clear voice, Gisèle Pélicot detailed with impressive composure the horror of discovering that her former spouse had systematically filmed the dozens of suspected rapes – storing thousands of images that police investigators later found.
“It’s unbearable,” she told the court in the southern French city of Avignon in an hour of testimony. “I have so much to say that I don’t always know where to start.”
Dominique Pélicot, now 71, and 50 other men are standing trial on charges of aggravated rape and face up to 20 years in prison. The trial started on Monday and is expected to run until December. Thursday marked the first time that Gisèle Pélicot, also in her 70s, had testified.
The Associated Press doesn’t generally identify victims of sexual crimes. But Gisèle Pélicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said she accepted that her name would be published in the same way that she insisted that the trial be held in public.
She told the court that she hopes her testimony might help spare other women from similar ordeals. She said she pushed for the trial in open court in solidarity with other women who go unrecognized as victims of sexual crimes.
She and her husband of 50 years had three children. When they retired, the couple moved into a house in Mazan, a small town in Provence.
“I thought we were a close couple,” she told the court.
But in late 2020, a security agent caught her husband taking photos of women’s crotches in a supermarket, leading investigators to search Dominique Pélicot’s phone and computer. They found thousands of photographs and videos of men appearing to rape Gisèle in their home while she appears to be unconscious.
When police officers called her in for questioning, she initially told them her husband was “a great guy.” But after being confronted with the unfathomable – police showed her some of the images – she left her husband.
“For me, everything collapses,” she testified. “These are scenes of barbarity, of rape.”
She left with two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together”. Since then, she said, “I no longer have an identity … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself.”
Police investigators found communications Dominique Pélicot allegedly sent on a messaging website commonly used by criminals, in which he invited men to sexually abuse his wife. French authorities shut down the website earlier this year.
Source: CNA
