Pelicot trial: French court hears how mass rape went undetected for years

Pelicot’s former husband Dominique, 71, is standing trial in the city of Avignon, along with 50 other men, accused of drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her in a case that has stunned the nation and made headlines around the world. 

The affaire Mazan, after the small town in Provence where the couple lived, has been described as many things at once: a trial of warped masculinity and patriarchal domination, of societal indifference to the abuse suffered by women, and of French laws on sexual crimes that critics say omit the notion of consent.  

The chilling case has also prompted soul-searching among health workers in France, highlighting doctors’ struggle to detect the signs of drug-facilitated abuse – known in France as “chemical submission”. 

“To understand the origin of all this, we would have had to think of the unimaginable,” Joël Pelicot, a doctor and Dominique Pelicot's elder brother, told the court on Tuesday, illustrating widespread ignorance of the use of drugs to prey on women, particularly in cases of domestic abuse. 

“But we didn’t think of it,” added the bespectacled doctor, 76, one of several medical practitioners who prescribed an anti-anxiety drug known as Temesta to Gisèle Pelicot, telling the court that “she suffered from bouts of anxiety and had trouble sleeping”.  

A common drug 

After previously testing a variety of drugs and sleeping pills, Dominique Pelicot began administering Temesta to his wife in 2015, acting on the advice of a nurse he met online. The drugs put his wife into a deep sleep, allowing him to sexually abuse her without her realising. 

The pensioner himself had been prescribed Temesta for several years, the court learned on Tuesday, telling his doctor he was experiencing financial difficulties and suffering from anxiety. Prescribing Temesta for patients who suffer from sleep disorders or anxiety is extremely common in France, to the point that pharmacies frequently run out of the drug. 

Once he had honed his method, Dominique Pelicot contacted dozens of strangers on the Coco.fr dating website and invited them to rape his sedated wife. To ensure that she remained inert, he gradually increased the doses, to between three and ten tablets a day, which he crushed into her food and drink.  

There were warning signs, such as the day Gisèle Pelicot noticed that her beer was a dubious shade of green, but little to suggest the extent of the scheme. In all, nearly 780 Temesta tablets were prescribed by various doctors until 2020, the year Dominique Pelicot was arrested. 

Read more‘I was convinced it was a game': Defendants begin testifying at Pelicot rape trial gripping France

The 71-year-old has admitted inviting strangers into their home to rape her. Most of his co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to rape charges, some claiming they believed Gisèle Pelicot was consenting or that her husband’s consent was sufficient. 

‘She sounded in a daze’ 

Throughout her ordeal, the toll on Gisèle Pelicot’s health did not go unnoticed by doctors and relatives, though they failed to understand its cause. Taking the witness stand on Tuesday, her son-in-law Pierre Peyronnet spoke of the family’s concern about her rapidly deteriorating health and of the difficulty in reaching out to her. 

“We found it very difficult to get her on the phone, and most of the time it was [Dominique] who answered, explaining that Gisèle was asleep, even in the middle of the day,” Peyronnet told the court. “It sounded plausible because she did a lot, especially looking after the children,” the 52-year-old said. 

When they were finally able to speak to her, she “often spoke incoherently and sounded in a daze”, Peyronnet added, accusing his father-in-law of deliberately misleading them. 

“We believed [Dominique Pelicot's] perverse argument that it was our fault that her health was deteriorating,” he said. “We even discussed making her come to see us less often, so that she wouldn’t wear herself out. I now understand that the aim was to keep her under his thumb.” 

Gisèle Pelicot consulted a host of doctors over such mystifying symptoms as memory loss and momentary absences, as well as gynecological conditions that included an inflamed cervix. Her husband feigned surprise, taunting her with suggestions she may be having an extra-marital affair. 

Consumed by anxiety, Gisèle Pelicot ceased to drive her car or travel alone. Her husband was only caught after three women reported him to the police for trying to use his camera to film up their skirts in a grocery store. 

Training doctors to detect ‘chemical submission’ 

When quizzed about doctors’ failure to piece things together, Joël Pelicot, the brother of the accused, told the court that in medicine, “you only find what you look for – and you only look for what you know”.  

In a recent interview with Le Monde, gynaecologist Ghada Hatem, the founder of a pioneering medical facility that caters to women who are vulnerable or victims of abuse, acknowledged that even she knew very little about domestic “chemical submission” before hearing of the Pelicot case.  

Since then, special courses on the subject have been set up at the Maison des femmes she founded and at similar facilities, designed to train medical workers to detect the symptoms experienced by victims of drug-facilitated abuse. 

In 2022, police registered more than 2,000 complaints involving allegations of “chemical submission”, an increase of 69% on the previous year. However, it is estimated that only 10% of victims lodge a complaint. 

The subject made waves in parliament last year when lawmaker Sandrine Josso accused a French senator of spiking her drink with the intent of sexually abusing her. Josso, who led a government-appointed commission on “chemical submission”, told FRANCE 24 last month that she was paying close attention to the Pelicot trial, voicing hopes that it would help raise awareness of what she described as a “blind spot” in the fight against sexual violence. 

Gisèle Pelicot, who refused to hold the trial behind closed doors, has herself emerged as a champion of the cause, stating at the start of the proceedings that she would "speak out so that no other woman has to endure chemical submission”. 

This article has been translated from the original in French.