A 71-year-old man in France has gone on trial accused of drugging his then wife and recruiting as many as 51 men to rape her.
Dominique Pelicot does not contest the allegations although there are claims of innocence among his co-accused.
He admitted to drugging his wife by dosing her with sleeping pills before raping her and inviting others to do the same.
Le Parisien reports that prior to the revelations the couple had been married for 40 years and were understood to be happy together.
51 men, including Pelicot, are currently on trial in Avignon where the alleged rapists of Gisèle – now 72- include a local journalist, a prison guard, truck drivers, soldiers, carpenters and trade workers, a nurse, and an IT expert.
The mother of three waived her right to anonymity and requested an open trial in hopes of raising awareness “so this never happens again”.
Gisèle’s lawyers told the court that their client also opted for an open trial as she wants to raise awareness about the dangerous of the use of drugs in sexual abuse and because her alleged rapists would wish closed proceedings.
⚖️ "La honte doit changer de camp": conformément au souhait de la victime, le huis clos a été refusé lundi à Avignon au procès du retraité accusé d'avoir drogué son épouse et recruté des dizaines d'inconnus sur internet pour la violer, pendant dix ans #AFPVertical ⤵️ pic.twitter.com/DueL7Pmvml
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) September 2, 2024
At the opening of the proceedings the alleged victim said, “I feel dirty, soiled betrayed. It’s a tsunami. I’ve been hit by a high-speed train,”.
The alleged practice came to light in 2020 after three women accused Pelicot of trying to film up their skirts at a supermarket.
During examination of his electronic devices 300 images and video of an unconscious woman being sexually abused. They also found Skype messages where he boasted of drugging his wife and invited others to assault her. The images were stored in a folder named “abuse”.
Among the accused are those who are charged with raping Gisèle once and also those who are accused of assaulting her multiple times.
Some of the accused maintain that they believed her husband’s permission was good enough, that they were led to believe that the unconscious woman had consented to being drugged, or that she was a willing participant in a ‘three way’ but was ‘shy’ and only pretending to be asleep.
Pelicot denies this claiming that each of the men knew that his wife was drugged without her consent.
Each of the alleged sexual assaults were filmed and stored on a USB.
It is alleged that the men, once invited over to the Pelicot home in Menz, were asked to not smoke, to not wear cologne, and to warm their hands with hot water so as not to alert the unconscious woman that a stranger had been present.
Of 83 total suspects police were able to identify and charge 50 who Pelicot said he met on a now shut down website in a chat room called “a son insu” or ‘without their knowledge’.
92 rapes were captured on the footage found by police amongst which Pelioct was heard to refer to his unconscious wife as a “slut”.
The men on trial – 20 of whom including Pelicot are in custody – were aged between 21 and 68 at the time of the alleged abuse which went on over a decade from 2011 according to police findings.
Of the 51 suspects one is not charged with abusing Gisèle but of ‘borrowing’ Pelicot’s methods and using them to rape his own wife.
The trial is expected to last for four months.