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.)

Paris:

The main defendant in a mass rape trial that has sparked horror and protests in France was absent on Monday because he is “unwell” and must undergo medical treatment, the presiding judge said.

Dominique Pelicot, 71, has been on trial since September 2 over raping and recruiting strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife Gisele for nearly a decade. 

The trial had already been briefly suspended in mid-September due to the absence of Dominique Pelicot, who was suffering from intestinal problems.

“He’s unwell. He has to have medical treatment this afternoon,” Judge Roger Arata said at the start of the hearing on Monday in the southeastern city of Avignon. “We’ll see tomorrow,” he added.

Dominique Pelicot had already been excused from the hearing on Friday to undergo a medical examination. 

His lawyer Beatrice Zavarro had told AFP on Sunday that the examination “went well.”

Pelicot has admitted to the charges against him.

He is being tried along with 50 other men aged between 26 and 74, many of whom have denied the rape charge. Most risk up to 20 years in jail if convicted of aggravated rape.

Seven more defendants will be called to testify on Thursday. 

Among them is 46-year-old Jerome V., a former grocery store employee, who sexually assaulted Gisele Pelicot six times in 2020 at the couple’s home in the town of Mazan in southeastern France.

Gisele Pelicot, Dominique’s ex-wife who only discovered the abuse in 2020 after being told of it by police, has requested that the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

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

Marseille, France:

Walking into court each day with her head held high, the ex-wife of a Frenchman on trial for orchestrating her mass rape in her own bed for almost a decade has become a feminist icon.

With her now trademark auburn bob and dark glasses, 71-year-old Gisele Pelicot has become a figurehead in the battle against the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

Her life was shattered in 2020 when she discovered that her partner of five decades had for years been secretly administering her large doses of tranquilisers to rape her and invite dozens of strangers to join him.

But she has decided not to hide and demanded the trial of Dominique Pelicot, 71, and 50 co-defendants since September 2 be open to the public because, as she has said through one of her lawyers, it should be up to her alleged abusers – not her – to be ashamed.

“It’s a way of saying… shame must change sides,” her attorney Stephane Babonneau said as the trial opened.

Since then, feminist activists have used her stylised portrait by Belgian artist Aline Dessine, daubed with the words “Shame is changing sides”, to show support and call for protests.

The artist with 2.5 million followers on TikTok has given up all rights to the image.

‘VERY BRAVE’

Outside the courtroom in the southern town of Avignon on Friday, protester Nadege Peneau said she was full of admiration for the trial’s main plaintiff.

“What she’s doing is very brave,” she said.

“She’s speaking up for so many children and women, and even men” who have been abused, she added.

Gisele Pelicot in August obtained a divorce from her husband, who has confessed to the abuse after meticulously documenting it with photos and videos.

She has moved away from the southern town of Mazan where, in her own words, for years he treated her like “a piece of meat” or a “rag doll”.

She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her former name as a married woman.

Her lawyer Antoine Camus said she had transformed from a devoted wife and retiree, who loved walks and choir singing, into a woman in the seventies ready for a battle.

“I will have to fight till the end,” she told the press on September 5, in her only public statement outside court in the first days of the four-month trial.

“Obviously it’s not an easy exercise and I can feel attempts to trap me with certain questions,” she added calmly.

‘NOT IN VAIN’

The daughter of a member of the military, Gisele Pelicot was born on December 7, 1952 in Germany, returning to France with her family when she was five.

When she was only nine, her mother, aged just 35, died of cancer.

“In my head, I was already 15, I was already a little woman,” she said, describing growing up “without much love”.

Her older brother Michel died of a heart attack aged 43, before her 20th birthday.

She has said she was never one to publicly show emotions.

“In the family, we hide tears and we share laughter,” one of her lawyers had reported her as saying.

She met Dominique Pelicot, her future husband and rapist, in 1971.

She had dreamt of becoming a hairdresser but instead studied to be a typist. After a few years temping, she joined France’s national electricity company EDF, ending her career in a logistics service for its nuclear power plants.

At home, she looked after her three children, then seven grandchildren, and did a little gymnastics.

Only when the police caught her husband filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020 did she find out the true reason behind her troubling memory lapses.

Camus, her lawyer, said his client “never wanted to be a role model”.

“She just wants all this not to be in vain,” he said.
 

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