Dominique Pelicot ‘s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro answers reporters outside the Nanterre courthouse where the convicted rapist who horrified France by drugging his then-wife, Gisele Pélicot, so other men could rape her, is now caught up in other cases, Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025, in Nanterre, outside Paris.
| Photo Credit: AP

Dominique Pélicot, the convicted rapist who horrified France by drugging his then-wife so other men could rape her, was questioned Thursday (January 30, 2025) about other cases of rape and murder that he’s suspected in.

Pélicot is serving a 20-year prison term after he was found guilty in December for the horrific sexual abuse of his now ex-wife, Gisèle Pélicot.

His lawyer told The Associated Press that he now faces renewed questioning by an investigating magistrate who specializes in so-called cold cases — those that have proved particularly hard to resolve.

The rape and murder cases date back to the 1990s. One involves Sophie Narme, a property agent who was killed in Paris on Dec. 4, 1991. His lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, said Dominique Pélicot denies any involvement in the killing.

The other is the attempted armed rape of another property agent in the Paris suburb of Villeparisis on May 11, 1999. In that case, Pélicot acknowledges that he met the woman and tried to undress her but denies attempted rape, his lawyer said.

Dominique Pélicot has been under formal investigation for both of those crimes since October 2022 — a legal status meaning that investigators believe there is an accumulation of serious evidence against him.

Lawyer Florence Rault, who represents Narme’s family and the woman subjected to the rape attempt, said an array of similarities between the 1991 and 1999 cases suggested the perpetrator might be the same.

“One has to remain cautious. Perhaps someone else committed the crime on Sophie Narme. But there are such similarities in the mode of operation, in the way the victims were approached — and the victims are so identical, too — that one can legitimately ask many questions,” Ms. Rault said on RTL radio.

The two cases were grouped together into one investigation in September 2022 that was taken over by the specialized unit for cold cases and serial crimes. It works out of the Paris suburb of Nanterre.

Speaking on her way into Dominique Pélicot’s hearing with the investigating magistrate at the Nanterre cold-case unit, Zavarro said he plans to cooperate. She noted that he had previously been questioned in 2023 and had acknowledged having been in contact with the property agent in the 1999 case, but not with Sophie Narme.

“He has always said that he never met Sophie Narme,” Zavarro said.

Zavarro said Dominique Pélicot has acknowledged to investigators that he met the other property agent. The lawyer said police found traces of his DNA at the scene of their meeting.

“He acknowledged having had an altercation with her, having tried to undress her, but with intentions different from attempted rape,” she said.

Pélicot’s lawyer sought to separate the current investigation from what he did to his then-wife.

’’Let’s remember … he benefits from the presumption of innocence,″ Zavarro said. ‘’Let’s not make him into a guilty party ahead of time.″

She described his conditions in solitary confinement, and said he has not been allowed visitors since 2020. “It’s an isolation measure that was imposed on him, and that he lives with every day. He is not complaining — he knows it was imposed on him based on the nature of the facts.″

The rape and murder cases occurred more than 10 years before the drugging and rapes of Gisèle Pélicot for which Pélicot and 50 other men were convicted — a nearly decade-long stretch of sexual abuse from 2011. He knocked her unconscious by lacing her food and drink with drugs and invited other men he met online to rape her.

Gisèle Pelicot became a hero to many in France and beyond for courageously demanding that the men’s trial be held in open court.

The evidence included stomach-churning homemade videos of the abuse that Dominique Pélicot filmed in the couple’s retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere. Police subsequently found more than 20,000 photos and videos in all, stored on computer drives and catalogued in folders marked “abuse,” “her rapists,” “night alone” and other titles.

London:

The daughter of Dominique Pelicot, the Frenchman found guilty of drugging his ex-wife so dozens of strangers could rape her, said in comments released Saturday that her father “should die in prison”.

In her first television interview since Pelicot was jailed for 20 years last month following a trial that horrified France, Caroline Darian told the BBC her father “was always a sexual pervert”.

“He should die in prison, he is a dangerous man,” said Darian in “Pelicot Trial: The Daughter’s Story,” which the British broadcaster will air on Monday.

Pelicot, 72, was convicted of drugging and raping Gisele Pelicot and soliciting dozens of men to do the same for more than a decade.

Some 50 co-defendants were also found guilty and handed various sentences of between three and 15 years following a three-month public trial in the southern French city of Avignon.

Gisele Pelicot waived her right to a closed trial and was hailed as a hero for her courage and dignity.

“There’s no way you can wake up one morning and say, ‘Okay, I’m gonna drug my wife,'” said Darian.

“So I think there are two Dominiques co-existing in him. He decided to choose the dark side.”

She added: “I don’t know if he is a monster, but he perfectly knew what he did, he’s not sick. He did everything consciously.”

Darian herself believes she was drugged and raped by Pelicot, after pictures of her naked and unconscious body were found among the detailed records her father kept of his crimes.

Pelicot denied during the trial that he had ever abused her as the two clashed in the courtroom.

“He’s always lying,” Darian told the BBC.

“I know that he drugged me, probably for sexual abuse, but I don’t have any evidence.”

Darian added that she now sees her father as only “a stranger”.

“I look straight to the criminal, to the sexual criminal he is,” she said.

The release of the interview comes as Darian will narrate a TV documentary on the use of drugs to enable rape and sexual abuse.

Slated for broadcast by France 2 on January 21, the 90-minute film is set to include testimony from six other victims raped after being drugged unwittingly.

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

Frenchwoman Gisele Pelicot, the victim of a mass rape orchestrated by her then-husband Dominique Pelicot at their home in the southern French town of Mazan, talks to journalists, surrounded by relatives and her lawyers, after the verdict in the trial for Dominique Pelicot and 50 co-accused, at the courthouse in Avignon, France, December 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

The ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot won’t appeal his 20-year prison sentence for drugging and raping her and allowing dozens of other men to also rape her while she was unconscious, in a case that revolted France, his lawyer said Monday.

Dominique Pelicot wants to spare his ex-wife the ordeal of another trial, lawyer Béatrice Zavarro said in an interview with broadcaster France Info.

She said 17 of the 50 other men also found guilty this month after a more than three-month trial that turned 72-year-old Gisèle Pelicot into an icon against sexual violence have decided to appeal their sentences.

The court in the southern French city of Avignon handed down sentences ranging from three to 15 years’ imprisonment for the 50 men — found guilty of rape, attempted rape and sexual assaults on Gisèle Pelicot over nearly a decade of shocking abuse orchestrated by her then-husband and inflicted on her unwittingly.

The court found Dominique Pelicot guilty of rape and all other charges against him and sentenced him to 20 years in prison, which was the maximum possible. At age 72, he could spend the rest of his life behind bars. He won’t be eligible to request early release until he’s served at least two-thirds of the sentence.

Zavarro, his lawyer, said: “He has decided not to appeal because he believes it would be a new ordeal and new confrontations for his [former] wife.”

“He believes that the judicial page should be turned and that this chapter should be considered closed,” she said.

The trial riveted France and and spurred a national reckoning about the blight of rape culture. Dominique Pelicot laced his wife’s food and drink with tranquilizers to render her unconscious. He then invited strangers he met online to take part in sordid rape and abuse fantasies that he acted out with them and filmed in the couple’s retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.

Gisèle Pelicot’s courage during the bruising trial and her appalling ordeal, inflicted on the retired power company worker in what she had thought was a loving marriage, galvanized campaigners and triggered calls for tougher measures to stamp out rape culture.

She waived her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual abuse and successfully pushed for the hearings and shocking evidence — including her ex-husband’s homemade videos of the rapes — to be heard in open court, insisting that shame should fall on her abusers, not her.

What is the common thread joining the Bangalore car crash claiming five lives, Blake Lively’s sexual harassment complaint against her It Ends With Us co-star Justin Baldoni, and France’s Giséle Pelicot rape trial? The tenuousness of the thread of safety we hang by. It can snap in a snap. It doesn’t matter how solid your car, career, or conjugality is; it may not necessarily keep you safe. Then, what is even the point of doing anything? If the basic need to be safe, both physiologically and emotionally, is too much of an ask, how can anyone stay motivated to achieve anything at either individual or communal level? 

Abraham Maslow surmised at least 80 years ago that safety is one of the five fundamental needs of human beings. According to Maslow’s A Theory of Human Motivation, the hierarchy of human needs is as follows: physiological, safety, love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. Safety, however, needs to be seen as an overarching holdall category. What is anything worth if nothing is safeguarding it? 

What is a long, stable marriage worth if the husband had been inviting strangers to rape the sedated wife?

What is a sturdy car, facilitated by a hefty pay packet, worth if the roads are unsafe?

What are an illustrious career and fame worth if they don’t ensure a safe work environment?

Women And Vulnerability

According to Maslow’s theory, the satisfaction of lower-level needs facilitates satisfying the next higher-level need. Sans safety, no need is ever fully met. The need for safety is also to be understood from a gendered perspective. Are women ever capable of reaching the top of the pyramid and meeting their self-actualisation goals if they have to be constantly watching over their shoulders? Or, have women trained themselves differently to see safety as an elusive, unattainable concept, and they are carrying on regardless? Have women, in other words, self-actualised as essentially vulnerable human beings? Perhaps so. Because this is the only way they are allowed to operate. Accepting their vulnerability and putting up their fences is what they have been getting good at. 

It involves a process of becoming a less-than-human entity. A focus on women’s bodies leads to “women to be perceived, and to behave, more like object and less like a human,” psychologists Nathan A. Heflick and Jamie L. Goldenberg concluded in their study of literal objectification. The most damning indictment of the gender status quo of our world comes as follows: “Women themselves also behave more like objects (by, e.g., speaking less) when they are aware of this focus by others”. 

When The ‘Code’ Is Broken

Women’s need for safety has been marginalised, unless it is fetishised, for so long that anyone asserting it makes the headlines. It is seen as something radical and, ironically, destructive. Women’s need for safety hurts men’s need to always be in control. By not continuing to be objects, women break the code. 

During the historical Giséle Pelicot rape trial, Dominique Pelicot stated that the trial had ruined his life and family. Coming from a man pronounced guilty of programming an elaborate rape-my-drugged-wife activity for almost a decade, the sentiment is dark and sinister.

Similarly, in the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni case, the demand for a safe workplace environment was touted as a problem that needed to be addressed only by destroying Lively’s reputation. Women are not supposed to ask for safeguards, even from men who claim to be safeguarding women—Baldoni received the Voices of Solidarity Award on 9 December from the Vital Voices Global Partnership for his commitment to women’s empowerment. What does it tell us about the dispensability of women’s equal rights when even an ‘ally’ finds it difficult to stop being a garden variety workplace harasser?

Sometimes, it feels that only women are not allowed to feel safe. It’s as if almost everyone, including many women, has accepted it, too. When an accident happens on the road, a process of accountability assignation kickstarts. Who’s at fault may come later, but at least there is no quest for the perfect victim. Women’s lives are shattered by multiple metaphorical car crashes, and they mostly go unnoticed. If women demand safety, they are labelled as destructive, difficult, delusional or deranged, depending on what the flavour of the month is.   

It does not make sense anymore. 

(Nishtha Gautam is a Delhi-based author and academic.)

Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author

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.)

Her husband orchestrating her sexual abuse by strangers could have broken her. But by standing up to her abusers in court and demanding they be ashamed, France’s Gisele Pelicot has become a feminist champion.

More than three months of sometimes gruelling hearings, including graphic video evidence, are set to culminate when judges hand down sentences on Thursday.

When the trial of her now ex-husband and 50 other defendants opened in the French city of Avignon in September, journalists saw a woman with short red hair, hiding behind sunglasses.

The main victim in the case that shocked France was a grandmother whose life partner had admitted to drugging her for almost a decade so he and dozens of strangers he recruited online could rape her while unconscious.

But then Gisele Pelicot waived her right to anonymity and demanded the public be allowed access to the trial to raise awareness about drug use to commit abuse.

She won hearts across France and abroad, and triggered a flurry of art in her honour, after she said it was her abusers — not her — who should be ashamed.

“I wanted all women who are rape victims to say to themselves: ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, so we can do it too’,” she told the court in October.

“It’s not us who should feel shame, but them,” she added, referring to perpetrators.

As news of the trial spread, protests erupted across France to show support and fans started cheering her or even greeting her with flowers when she arrived in court.

And over the trial’s course, Gisele Pelicot shed her dark sunglasses.

‘Rape is rape’

Ahead of the verdicts, the 72-year-old has made it onto the BBC’s 100 Women list for 2024, alongside fellow mass rape survivor and Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad and Hollywood actor Sharon Stone.

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, her husband Dominique Pelicot treated her like “a piece of meat” or a “rag doll” for years.

She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her former name as a married woman — the one passed on to some of her seven grandchildren.

In mid-September, she dropped her usual reserve to talk of her humiliation and her anger towards several lawyers who had made insinuations about her ordeal.

“Rape is rape,” she said.

In October, she said she was “broken” but determined to change society.

She again told the court last month it was time for a “macho, patriarchal” society to shift its attitude towards rape.

She said the marathon hearings were an examination of the “cowardice” of the men who took part in the assaults.

Many had argued they thought they were taking part in a couple’s fantasy after consent by proxy through her husband.

She expressed her anger that none of her abusers alerted the police about the rapes, which occurred between 2011 and 2020.

Several took part in the abuse six times.

Fifty men besides her 72-year-old ex-husband are on trial, including one who did not rape Gisele Pelicot but repeatedly abused his own wife with Dominique Pelicot’s help.

Several of the co-defendants have admitted to rape.

But more than 20 other suspects remain at large as investigators had not managed to identify them before the start of the mass trial.

Memory lapses

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 nine, her mother, aged just 35, died of cancer.

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

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.

After she retired, she enjoyed walking and singing in a local choir.

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.

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

French judges plan to deliver hugely anticipated verdicts on Thursday (December 19, 2024) in a historic drugging-and-rape trial that has turned the victim, Gisèle Pelicot, into a feminist hero.

Everything about the trial in the southern French city of Avignon has been exceptional, most of all Ms. Pelicot herself.

She has been the epitome of steely dignity and resilience through the more than three months of appalling testimony, including extracts from her now ex-husband’s sordid library of homemade abuse videos.

Dominique Pelicot carefully catalogued how he habitually tranquilized his wife of 50 years during their last decade together, so he and dozens of strangers he met online could rape her while she was unconscious.

Staggeringly, he found it easy to recruit his alleged accomplices. Many had jobs. Most are fathers. They came from all walks of life, with the youngest in his 20s and the oldest in their 70s. In all, 50 men, including Dominique Pelicot, stood trial for aggravated rape and attempted rape. Another man was tried for aggravated sexual assault.

“They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag,” Gisèle Pélicot testified in court.

Sifting through the charges, the evidence, the backgrounds of the accused and their defenses took so long that Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot had birthdays during the trial, with both turning 72.

The five judges are ruling by secret ballot, with a majority required to convict and also on the sentences of those found guilty. Campaigners against sexual violence are hoping for exemplary prison terms and view the trial as a possible turning point in the fight against rape culture and the use of drugs to subdue victims.

At protests during the trial, demonstrators held up pop-art images of Gisèle Pelicot with her bob haircut and round sunglasses, along with slogans such as, “Shame is changing sides” and “Gisèle, we believe you !” They also booed defendants as they entered the courthouse yelling, “We recognize you” and “Shame.”

Dominique Pelicot’s meticulous recording and cataloguing of the encounters — police found more than 20,000 photos and videos on his computer drives, in folders titled “abuse,” “her rapists” or “night alone” — provided investigators with an abundance of evidence and helped lead them to the defendants. That also set the case apart from many others in which sexual violence is unreported or isn’t prosecuted because the evidence isn’t as strong.

Gisèle Pelicot and her lawyers fought successfully for shocking video and other evidence to be heard and watched in open court, to show that she bore no shame and was clearly unconscious during the alleged rapes, undermining some defendants’ claims that she might have been feigning sleep or even have been a willing participant.

Her courage — one woman, alone, against dozens of men — proved inspirational. Supporters, mostly women, lined up early each day for a place in the courthouse or to cheer and thank her as she walked in and out — stoic, humble, and gracious but also cognizant that her ordeal resonated beyond Avignon and France.

She said she was fighting for “all those people around the world, women and men, who are victims of sexual violence.”

“Look around you: You are not alone,” she said.

Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in food and drink that he gave his wife, knocking her out so profoundly that he could do what he wanted to her for hours.

In his medical records, police investigators found that he had been prescribed hundreds of tranquilizer tablets as well as the erectile dysfunction drug Viagra. He told police that he started drugging his wife in 2011, before they left the Paris region to retire in Mazan, a small town in Provence where he invited other men to rape her in their bedroom.

In the videos, police investigators counted 72 different abusers but weren’t able to identify them all. Dominique Pelicot told investigators that he also shared advice with people about drugging techniques and provided tranquilizers to others, too.

Gisèle Pelicot told investigators that the blackouts she suffered grew more frequent after they retired to Mazan in 2013, but that they stopped after her then-husband was taken into custody in 2020.

Spurred on by the trial, France’s government this month helped roll out a media campaign alerting the public to the dangers of chemical submission, with a number for victims to call. The campaign poster reads: “Chemical submission takes away your memories but leaves traces.”

Although some of the accused — including Dominique Pelicot — acknowledged they were guilty of rape, many did not, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings have sparked wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.

Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent covered his wife, too. Some sought to excuse their behavior by insisting that they hadn’t intended to rape anyone when they responded to the husband’s invites. Some laid blame at his door, saying he misled them into thinking they were partaking in consensual kink. And some suggested that perhaps he had also drugged them — which he denied.

Campaigners refused to buy it. “A rape is a rape” read a large banner hung opposite the courthouse.

Prosecutor Laure Chabaud appealed to the judges for a verdict that will make clear “that ordinary rape doesn’t exist, that accidental or involuntary rape doesn’t exist,” according to French media that followed the daily proceedings.

What Gisèle Pelicot initially described as a happy marriage to “a great guy” started to unravel in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught Dominique Pelicot surreptitiously filming up women’s skirts.

Police investigators called her in for questioning and confronted her with the unfathomable — some of her husband’s secret photos of her.

She left him, taking just two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together.”

Prosecutors have asked for the maximum possible penalty — 20 years — for Dominique Pelicot, and sentences of 10-18 years for the others tried on rape charges.

“Twenty years between the four walls of a prison,” Mr. Chabaud, the prosecutor, said. “It’s both a lot and not enough.”

Paris:

France announced Monday a new campaign to combat violence against women, including raising awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse, as the country reckons with a mass rape trial that has shocked the public.

Equality Minister Salima Saa unveiled a raft of initiatives two days after tens of thousands of people demonstrated in major French cities against violence targeting women, where protestors denounced government actions as “window-dressing”.

A case in the southern city of Avignon for 51 men, including one who drugged his wife over a decade and dozens of others are charged with accepting his invitations to abuse her at their home in Mazan in southern France, has stoked widespread anger.

There will be “a before Mazan, and an after Mazan just like there was a before and after #MeToo,” Saa said during an interview with broadcaster Franceinfo.

But advocates are calling for more far-reaching measures, including a dedicated 2.6 billion euro ($2.7 billion) budget and a stronger legal framework to tackle the problem.

The government will extend the network of hospitals where victims can report an incident from 236 to 377 by the end of 2025, Saa said, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

“A woman will be able to lodge a complaint at all hospitals with an emergency department and a gynaecological service,” she said.

Focus on drugs

She also announced an awareness campaign about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse, which she called “a new scourge”.

As part of the campaign, a helpline “can provide answers and advice and tell you which laboratory to go to, what to do with your hair, blood tests, and urine tests”, Saa said.

The budget for emergency assistance to help victims of domestic violence leave their homes will increase from 13 million euros to 20 million in 2025, a measure that has benefited 33,000 people since it was introduced at the end of 2023.

“We have succeeded in obtaining a 10 percent increase in the budget” devoted to gender equality, totalling 85.1 million euros, Saa said.

But that number falls far short of demands coming from women’s rights associations, which are calling for 2.6 billion euros and a “comprehensive legal framework” to replace current legislation that advocates say is “fragmented and incomplete”.

During his first term as president, Emmanuel Macron vowed to work to eliminate violence against women, a message Saa reiterated, calling it the “great cause” of his presidency.

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

And since the start of this year, 122 women have been killed, according to the feminist group NousToutes (All of us Women).

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

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.

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