“Today, I maintain that with the obligations that we all have, I am a rapist, like everyone else in this room. “Everyone knew it, we can’t say otherwise.” These are the words of Dominique Pelicot, accused of having drugged his wife, Gisèle, for ten years so that dozens of other men could rape her, during his testimony this Tuesday at the Avignon trial.
Pélicot, who said he “admits the facts in their entirety,” appeared in court again for a statement that had been postponed for a week due to his health.
The main defendant in the mega-trial wept as he recalled his childhood and the alleged abuse he says he suffered at age 9, as well as the rape he witnessed at age 14.
Gisele told the court on Tuesday that in the 50 years she lived with her husband, she could not imagine that he would rape her and that she did not doubt him “not even for a second”. “For 50 years, I lived with a man that I did not imagine could commit these acts of rape. He knows about these acts of rape, but I did not doubt this man for a single second. “I had total confidence in him.”
