It was not until the third week of the trial that the main accused’s explanations were heard. Most of the first 12 days of the case that shook France, the largest trial related to chemical submission in the country’s history, had to take place without Dominique Pélicot’s presence, due to health problems that raised fears of even a postponement of the process.
Because his participation and testimony are crucial to the prosecution of the 50 other men, aged 26 to 74, who are also on trial at the Avignon courthouse for raping his then-wife, Gisèle Pelicot. “I admit to all the facts. “I am a rapist, like everyone else in this room,” Pelicot said in his first statement on September 17. “They all knew it, they can’t say otherwise. They accepted with full knowledge of the facts. The only question they sometimes asked was ‘how much does it cost?’ I didn’t manipulate anyone.”
Several elements have made this trial an emblematic process of sexual violence against women. One of them is the number of accused and the diversity of their profiles, which have brought the debate on rape culture to the forefront in France. Different professions, different ages, different social backgrounds… they all accepted Dominique Pelicot’s offer. In addition to those who could not be identified and those who declined the offer but also did not report the facts.
This first statement by Dominique Pelicot marks the real beginning of the trial. The first face-to-face between him and the 35 defendants who deny the accusations brought against them. Fourteen are not contested, one is missing and is currently being tried. in absentia. As for those who claim innocence, they give various explanations: some deny “having the intention to rape”, others say they thought the victim agreed – even if they never spoke to her – and still others considered the consent of the victim’s husband sufficient.
Ignorance as a defense
In general, the majority claim to have been manipulated by Dominique Pelicot, who convinced them to participate in a couple’s fantasy. “They knew everything, they can’t deny it,” he replied. In one of the cases, Dominique Pelicot provided drugs to another defendant so that both of them could rape his wife, by chemical submission.
On the other hand, to explain his own behavior, Pélicot presents himself as a victim and lists different episodes from his childhood and youth. Among them, a rape he says he suffered in a hospital when he was nine years old, participation – forced by his colleagues – in a gang rape of a 14-year-old girl, early exposure to his parents’ sexuality. and sexual violence inflicted by his father on his adoptive sister. “We are not born perverts, we are born,” he declared before the court.
He also spoke of a nurse who, in 2011, gave him an idea to “put his wife to sleep without hurting her,” in his own words. Indeed, after years of drugs and abuse, Gisèle Pelicot began to suffer from neurological and gynecological problems for which she could not find an explanation.
According to the summary and his statement, from 2015 onwards, he would have found the ideal dose of anxiolytic to carry out the violations and the frequency would increase. In total, investigators counted more than 90 rapes recorded on video between July 2011 and October 2020, perpetrated by more than 80 men, of which only 50 were identified. The first dates back to 2011, when the couple still lived in the Paris region, before moving to the Vaucluse department in 2013, after their retirement.
Dominique Pelicot developed in those years a modus operandi precise, which included strict instructions to the men he invited to rape his wife: not to wear perfume or smell of tobacco, to leave the car in a parking lot a short distance from the house and walk the rest of the way, and to warm their hands in the radiator so that the cold would not wake the victim.
One of the questions the trial will seek to clarify is whether other family members were direct victims of Dominique Pelicot. Photos of his daughter naked and asleep, taken decades ago, were found on the computer. Pelicot denies taking them. Videos of his stepdaughters changing, recorded with a hidden camera, also emerged.
No memories
The case also highlighted the reality of chemical rape and the difficulty of bringing such cases to justice, where victims often have no memory of the events. In this case, the recordings made and kept for years by the accused are a central element of the prosecution’s case.
In the coming weeks, the defense of the other accused will question Dominique Pélicot, trying to find contradictions in his narration of the events and to deny his accusations that everyone knew about. A new stage in which the dissemination of these images has also begun.
Pressure on the victim
Last Wednesday, even before the first videos were broadcast on the screens of the Voltaire room of the Avignon Courthouse, the defense lawyers showed several photographs in which Gisèle Pelicot appeared naked in different positions.
The victim told the court that several of the images presented were not of her, while in others she had no recollection of posing. And he said they must have been taken while he was under the influence of drugs.
With these photographs, the lawyers hope to convince the court that their clients believed they were going to Dominique Pelicot’s home to find a woman who had agreed to participate and not rape a drugged victim. Some go further and try to convince that Gisèle Pelicot is not the victim of the actions of her husband and his guests, but that she was aware of it. “They are trying to trap me with these photos to show that I brought these individuals to my home and that I consented to it,” the victim protested during her statement last Wednesday.
“I note that [en las fotografías] “Ms. Pelicot is awake and we see her smiling,” said lawyer Isabelle Crépin-Dehaene, who represents one of the accused. “Not all women would accept this kind of photo. There was a request from the husband that was perfectly known to the woman, from which I deduce that there was a sexual game between them.
Another defense attorney, Philippe Kaboré, directly asked the victim if she had “exhibitionist tendencies” that she did not suspect. “It is not even necessary to answer this question, which I find very insulting,” replied Gisèle Pelicot. “Now I understand why rape victims do not file complaints: because they are subjected to this humiliating exposure.”
The legal articles published in recent days in the French media highlight that Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to open the trial to the press and the public is particularly inconveniencing the accused and their defense. The presence of journalists forces them to maintain, to a certain extent, formalities and some present at the interrogations wonder how far the pressure on the victim could have gone in a closed trial.
The dissemination of images
The next day, the first of the recordings made by Dominique Pelicot was broadcast on the court screens. It shows how he and another defendant (72 years old) abuse Gisèle, who is lying inert in her bed. “My wife takes a sleeping pill at night and when she falls asleep, I make men come,” Dominique Pelicot wrote to him when the two men contacted him online. The other defendant, for his part, denies being a rapist, claims to have been deceived by Dominique Pélicot and “to have believed that they were a liberal couple”. He only admits to having been a little “naive”.
The court estimates that the specific case of about six accused should be examined every week, so that this phase of interrogations and video presentation lasts until the beginning of November.
Despite the publicity desired by Gisèle Pelicot and her lawyers, the president of the criminal court, Roger Arata, announced Friday that the relevance of the dissemination of photos and videos will be decided on a case-by-case basis, “at the request of one or more parties” and without the press and the public in the courtroom. “Given that the images are shocking and indecent, only the parties and the court will be present,” Arata explained.
Videos of all the accused will not be broadcast and, in cases where this is done, only lawyers, court staff and the prosecution will be able to be present. The defense of Gisèle Pelicot and her family had requested that the trial not take place behind closed doors, “so that shame can change sides.”
This is why the decision was criticized by the prosecution. One of Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau, argued that “for society to change, we must have the courage to confront what rape really is. In an exceptional process like this, we have a precise representation of what a violation is and not just a statement.” And he added that “when we hear that the dignity of Ms. Pelicot and the accused must be protected by closing the doors of the courtroom, it is difficult not to have the impression that what we want to protect is indignity.”
In the same spirit, the prosecutor, Jean-François Meyer, had requested the same day the systematic diffusion of the images of all the accused. “Without this evidence, there would be no trial,” he declared, in a presentation in which he underlined the difficulty encountered by cases of rape with chemical submission. “Ms. Pelicot does not remember anything. And even if he remembered something, his statements would have been discussed and refuted here.”
The trial is expected to last until December. In parallel, other investigations are continuing. The DNA sample obtained from Dominique Pelicot during his arrest and the interrogations allowed the Police to link him to two other open cases. On the one hand, the sexual assault of a woman in May 1999 in the Paris region. On the other, the rape and murder of Sophie Narme in Paris, on December 4, 1991, a case that has remained unsolved since.
