‘I’m a woman who’s totally destroyed’: Gisèle Pélicot testifies in mass rape trial

Gisèle Pélicot took the stand Wednesday, addressing a packed courtroom that included her ex-husband and some of the 50 other men on trial who are charged with raping her at her former husband’s bidding.

For the first time since early in the trial, she spoke about her husband’s “immeasurable” betrayal, and expressed sympathy for the wives, mothers and sisters of his 50 co-defendants, French media reported.

“I always wanted to pull you up, toward the light,” she said, addressing her ex-husband, Dominque Pélicot. “You have chosen the depths of the human soul.”

Gisèle Pélicot, 71, has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France after she waived her right to anonymity and asked that the trial be made public, insisting that the blame be shifted from the victim to the perpetrators.

The trial is examining a 10-year period, from 2010 to 2020, in which her ex-husband is accused of soliciting and inviting dozens of strangers to rape his drugged and unconscious wife. The assaults were meticulously documented in thousands of videos and photos, which were found on his computer and phone when investigators went searching after he was caught filming under women’s skirts in a store.

Dominique Pélicot previously admitted to inviting the men, many of whom he found online, over to his home to rape his wife.

“Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,” Dominique Pélicot testified last month. “They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”

During earlier questioning, he told investigators that men invited to the couple’s home had to follow certain rules — they could not talk loudly, had to remove their clothes in the kitchen and could not wear perfume nor smell of tobacco.

They sometimes had to wait up to an hour and a half in a nearby parking lot for the drug to take full effect and render his wife unconscious, he said.

On Wednesday, Gisèle Pélicot told other rape victims that “it’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them.”

“I want all women who have been raped to say: Madame Pélicot did it, I can too. I don’t want them to be ashamed any longer,” she said, referring to her request to have an open trial and for videos of the alleged rapes to be shown in court.

The harrowing and unprecedented trial is exposing how pornography, chatrooms and men’s disdain for or hazy understanding of consent is fuelling rape culture. The horror isn’t simply that Dominique Pélicot, in his own words, arranged for men to rape his wife, it’s that he also had no difficulty finding dozens of them to take part.

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Among the nearly two dozen defendants who testified during the trial’s first seven weeks was Ahmed T. — French defendants’ full last names are generally withheld until conviction. The married plumber with three kids and five grandchildren said he wasn’t particularly alarmed that Pélicot wasn’t moving when he visited her and her now-ex-husband’s house in the small Provence town of Mazan in 2019.

It reminded him of porn he had watched featuring women who “pretend to be asleep and don’t react,” he said.

On Wednesday, Pélicot spoke about the various testimonies from female family members of the defendants who have called the accused “exceptional men.”

“That’s just like who I had back home,” she told the courtroom. “But a rapist is not just someone you meet in a dark car park late at night. He can also be found in the family, among friends.”

Protests have been organized across France to show support for Pélicot, with many women expressing admiration for her courage.

“It’s not courage. It’s determination to change things,” she said. “This is not just my battle, but that of all rape victims.”

Most of the accused told the court they have been manipulated by Dominique Pélicot, rejecting the blame on him. Only a few have admitted to raping Gisèle Pélicot.

Some have apologized.

“I hear those apologies, but they are inaudible,” she told the court. “By apologizing, they are trying to excuse themselves.”

Saying her husband’s betrayal of her trust was beyond measure, Pélicot told the court: “I’m a woman who’s totally destroyed.”

She had thought he was the perfect husband, she told the court, before adding: “My life has tumbled into nothingness.”

The 50 men on trial include a prison guard, a soldier, a firefighter, a former police officer, a journalist, nurses and a civil servant, with many of them living around the small French town, Mazan, the Pélicot family called home.

The trial is expected to wrap up in December.

— With files from The Associated Press and Reuters