Avignon:

Gisele Pelicot’s ex-husband was jailed on Thursday for 20 years over her drugging and mass rape by strangers recruited online, in a case that shocked France and resonated around the world.

After the trial was closed, Gisele Pelicot emerged to give a full statement to reporters, speaking about the trial itself, the verdict and her hopes for the future.

After over three months of hearings regarded as historic, here is Gisele Pelicot’s statement in full. 

“It is with great emotion that I am speaking with you today. This trial has been a very difficult ordeal. And at this moment, I am thinking first and foremost of my three children: David, Caroline, and Florian.

I am also thinking of my grandchildren because they are the future. I also led this fight for them, as well as for my daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine.

I am also thinking of all the other families affected by this tragedy. And finally, I am thinking of the unrecognised victims, whose stories often remain in the shadows. I want you to know that we share the same fight.

I would like to express my profound gratitude towards everyone who has supported me throughout this ordeal. Your messages have deeply moved me and have given me the strength to come back every day to face these long, daily hearings.

I would also like to thank the Association d’aide aux victimes (the Victim’s Aid Association), whose unwavering support has been invaluable.

To all the journalists who have followed this case from the beginning, I would like to express my gratitude for the credible, respectful, and dignified way in which they have reported on these hearings on a daily basis. 

Finally, to my lawyers, they know the gratitude and high regard I have for them, having accompanied me through every step of this painful process.

When I opened the doors to this trial that began on September 2, I wanted all of society to be a witness to the debates that took place here. I have never regretted that decision.

I now have confidence in our capacity to find a better future where everyone — women and men alike — can live in harmony with respect and mutual understanding.”

A reporter then asked Gisele Pelicot about the court’s decision.

“I respect the court and its decision of the verdict,” she said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

This was in the middle of testimony at the rape trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other defendants, which has shocked the country, sparked mass protests and raised awareness in France about the use of drugs to commit abuse.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Some callers are women fearful they have been drugged and sexually assaulted; others are doctors worried they have misdiagnosed them — a helpline set up amid France’s notorious mass rape trial has tapped a nation’s unease.

The helpline, known as the Reference Centre on Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault (or CRAFS, its acronym in French), was launched by a Paris health centre on October 15.

That was in the middle of testimony at the rape trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other defendants, which has shocked the country, sparked mass protests and raised awareness in France about the use of drugs to commit abuse.

For years, Gisele Pelicot, Dominique’s now-former wife, had strange memory lapses and other health problems, consulting numerous doctors who could not pinpoint the cause.

Then police told her she had been drugged and raped for nearly a decade by her husband and dozens of strangers he recruited online.

Since its launch, the helpline has received a wave of calls from healthcare providers and victims seeking information about drug-related abuse, said Leila Chaouachi, a doctor who founded the service.

“The doctors who contact us say they, too, might not have noticed anything,” said Chaouachi, referring to Gisele Pelicot’s symptoms.

“What are the warning signs? They feel they don’t have enough training,” she added.

-Symptoms and guidance

One of the services offered by CRAFS is to provide information on the possible symptoms linked to drug-related abuse.

There are many indicators that someone could have been drugged, said Chaouachi: drowsiness, nausea, disorientation, blurred vision and amnesia, among others.

But some healthcare professionals tell Chaouachi they are worried they might overlook the signs or, if they do recognise them, are unsure of what to do next.

CRAFS can also offer guidance on those possible next steps.

One doctor who contacted the centre worried that a patient — a victim of domestic violence — was also drugged by her partner, and wanted to know if a hair analysis should be prescribed to detect the presence of substances.

“Five centimetres of hair is like five months of history,” explained one of the CRAFS team of pharmacologists, who are also trained in sexual assault response.

Victims who call the hotline are encouraged to lodge a complaint to benefit from free drug detection kits.

In mid-November, Equality Minister Salima Saa announced an awareness campaign about the “new scourge” of using drugs to commit sexual abuse, which Chaouachi said can sometimes be misunderstood.

‘Speaking out’

There are “preconceived notions” around the use of drugs in sexual assault cases, Chaouachi told AFP.

“People think it’s about young girls drugged in a nightclub with GHB,” said Chaouachi, referring to a notorious “date-rape drug” often used in sexual assaults.

“However, our data shows that the victim is often drugged by someone around her who betrays her trust,” she said.

“It could be a woman of any age… an elderly person drugged to make them sign a paper extorting an inheritance, or a child drugged so someone doesn’t have to look after them. That is chemical abuse.”

In 2023, French police recorded more than 110,000 victims of sexual violence, 85 percent of them women.

For some, the hotline offers an opportunity to speak about what happened to them, even if the abuse was too long ago for medical detection.

“Even if they are old, these accounts are useful: they tell us how attackers operate,” Chaouachi said. “And speaking out and being heard is good for the victim.”

Prosecutors have sought a maximum 20-year jail term for Dominique Pelicot, and 10 to 18 years in prison for 49 of the 50 co-defendants accused of rape or attempted rape, with a four-year punishment requested in only one case.

A verdict is expected on December 19 or 20.

The trial of a Frenchman who recruited dozens of strangers to rape his drugged wife at their home resumes on Monday, with the cases of eight new defendants to be examined in court.

The case of Dominique Pelicot, 71, and 50 other co-defendants aged 26 to 74 years old has caused outrage and sparked protests since it opened on September 2 in the southern city of Avignon.

For refusing to be ashamed and demanding the trial be open to the public, his ex-wife Gisele Pelicot, also 71, has become a feminist heroine in France and abroad.

The court has already questioned 36 of the defendants, including Pelicot himself, and will after a week’s break on Monday start examining eight more of the co-accused.

Antoine Camus, one of Gisele Pelicot’s lawyers, said the international attention had given his client the strength to carry on.

“It’s an endurance race, but she of course remains ready for the fight and determined to see it through, because she has also been uplifted by this wave of support in France and abroad,” he told AFP.

“She very often receives many accounts that uplift her and help her in this marathon, which she is completing not just for herself.”

The abuse was uncovered after police in 2020 arrested Dominique Pelicot for filming up women’s skirts in a local supermarket.

He has admitted to raping his then wife Gisele Pelicot and enlisting dozens to join him between 2011 and 2020, meticulously documenting the abuse in thousands of images investigators found on his hard drives.

Driver, cleaner, HIV positive man

But his co-accused, most of whom risk up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape in convicted, have largely claimed they had no idea it was rape.

They have said they thought they were taking part in the sex game of a libertine couple.

“It’s really tiring for Gisele Pelicot to almost systematically hear the same explanations from the accused,” Camus said. “That was victim of rape ‘by accident’, rape ‘by error of judgement’, or ‘reluctant’ rape.”

The next eight men to be cross-examined from Monday include a 36-year-old truck driver, a 31-year-old labourer, a 36-year-old cleaner and a 42-year-old restaurant manager.

Among them is a 50-year-old software technician who has been accused of planning to imitate Dominique Pelicot’s methods on his own wife.

An HIV-positive single man, now aged 63, has been charged with visiting the Pelicot home in the southern town of Mazan six times to abuse Gisele Pelicot, not once using a condom.

The court will also examine the case of a 30-year-old who is the only co-defendant being tried in absentia.

‘Abused his own daughter’

Finally, an unemployed 41-year-old has been accused of raping Gisele Pelicot in 2019, with the complicity of her then husband, at the home of the couple’s daughter in the Paris region.

He denied committing rape of the first day of the trial.

The couple’s two sons and daughter, who goes by her pen name Caroline Darian, have regularly appeared at the trial to support their mother.

But Darian was not present at some of the more recent hearings.

In late October, after the trial reached half-mark, she announced on Instagram that she was checking in to a clinic for a few days to recharge and “to be able to sleep again”.

Darian, who in 2022 wrote a book “Et j’ai cesse de t’appeler papa” (“And I stopped calling you dad”), has campaigned for awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

She left the courtroom in tears early during the trial as the presiding judge recounted how her father also had naked photomontages of her on his computer.

“I too am a victim of Dominique P,” Darian wrote on Instagram.

“He drugged me without my knowledge, and without a doubt abused his own and only daughter.”

The trial is to last until December 20.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)