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WARNING: Includes upsetting content about sexual assault
The daughter of a pensioner accused of recruiting 50 men to rape his drugged wife left a courtroom in tears after the judge said her father also kept naked photos of her.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, is charged with inviting men to have intercourse with his wife Gisele via a now-banned online chat forum after drugging her unconscious.
This week, some 35 defendants pleaded not guilty and 14 guilty, including Pelicot, who admitted to investigators that he gave his wife powerful tranquilisers, including Temesta, an anxiety-reducing drug.
One defendant is absent for unexplained reasons and another is on the run. They each face up to 20 years in jail if found guilty.
On day two of the trial in Avignon, southern France, harrowing details emerged as Roger Arata, the presiding judge, spent the entire day summing up the case, laid out in a 400-page indictment.
The judge, who is presiding over a panel of five professional magistrates, told the court that photos of Pelicot’s naked daughter Caroline Darian – a pen name – had been found on his computer, in a file entitled: “Around my daughter, naked”.
She collapsed in tears and left the room shaking with emotion, escorted by her two brothers and Antoine Camus, her mother’s lawyer, but reappeared some 20 minutes later.
Gisele Pelicot (in sunglasses), her daughter Caroline Darian (centre) and sons have appeared in court to face Dominique Pelicot. Photo / AFP
‘Particularly gruelling’
For the couple’s children, “it’s immensely painful, unbearable”, Camus said afterwards.
“Even if they are not discovering anything new as they know the case, it was particularly gruelling this morning.”
Gisele Pelicot’s lawyers said she was so heavily sedated she was not aware of the abuse that went on for a decade, mainly at their home in Mazan, Provence.
She has commenced divorce proceedings.
The case, which has appalled France, came to light by chance when Pelicot was caught filming up women’s skirts in a local supermarket in 2020.
When questioned, he said that he had “acted on urges” that he had “not been able to control”.
Experts said he does not appear to be mentally ill, but concluded that he needed to feel “all-powerful” over the female body, according to assessments included in court documents.
The defendants include a fireman, lorry driver, councillor, IT worker in a bank, prison guard, nurse and a journalist.
Darian told Le Parisien this week that she was haunted by the fear her father may have invited some of the men to rape her after a picture of her “in someone else’s underwear” was found on his computer.
“I’m convinced I was drugged, but he’ll never admit it,” she told the French daily.
Pelicot sat at the other end of the courtroom, directly opposite his wife on the second day of the trial. He was dressed in a grey T-shirt and listened intently to the proceedings. The couple’s two sons were also present. One stared at the father fixedly.
At first impassive, Pelicot appeared to fight back tears and bit his lips in front of his ex-wife and their three children.
‘The holder of consent’
The judge said Pelicot had told investigators about “three out of 10 men” refused his invitation after he explained in online chats what he was doing to his wife.
He cited some of the curious responses given by the men during police questioning.
One said he thought nothing illegal or non-consensual had occurred because of the presence of cameras at the couple’s home. “It couldn’t have been anything bad because it was all filmed,” he is cited as saying.
Another said that “as long as the husband was present, there was no rape”.
A third claimed he thought it was all part of “a couple’s game”, the court heard.
“The relationship had to take place at night in complete darkness because the woman was shy and hung up despite her desire. She would pretend to be asleep,” another was quoted as saying.
Other defendants claim to have been under the “sway” of Pelicot, who acted like a “very controlling conductor”.
“I did what he asked but I didn’t know why,” claimed one.
Dominique Pelicot is accused of intoxicating his wife and then inviting dozens of men to assault her for almost a decade.
“The husband is seen as the spokesperson for the couple and the holder of her consent to his marriage,” he said, citing one of the defendants arguments.
Another defendant expressed regret for the victim and immediately said that he was “as much a victim as she was”, believing that he had been tricked by the husband.
‘A state closer to coma’
During searches investigators came across thousands of photos and videos showing Gisele Pelicot being sexually abused by strangers recruited online on a forum called “Without her knowledge” on the controversial website coco.gg, shut down by the courts since last June.
Dominique Pelicot, who appeared on the site under a pseudonym, has claimed he took part “occasionally” in the online forum and that it was “not his habit”.
But several discussions were found in which he sometimes used the term “rape” and told potential attackers that administering sleeping pills to his wife allowed him to abuse her by engaging practices she would normally refuse.
He ordered 450 pills in the space of a year, according to the national health insurance.
The judge said that “the instructions were clear” to the would-be rapists allegedly recruited by Dominique Pelicot.
“Come at night, without perfume or the smell of cigarettes. The men were to undress outside the bedroom, make no noise and leave at the slightest movement or sign that the victim was awake,” he told the court.
He cited the examining magistrate who stated that the defendants “could not have been unaware, in view of the victim’s inert state, that she was not in a normal state of consciousness”.
“The victim was in a state closer to a coma than to sleep,” he added, citing expert reports.
