What would happen if you found out that your husband, who you’ve spent your entire life with, drugs you so that other men can rape you?
Aberrant, disgusting, terrifying, unbelievable, impossible; it can be described as such. The thing is that this did happen in the community of Mazan, at the southeast of France, where Giséle and Dominique Pelicot were, apparently, a happy and calm married couple for 50 years, who had 3 children and 7 grandchildren.
What 72-year-old Giséle didn’t know was that, for almost a decade, she was drugged by her 71-year-old ex-husband Dominique Pelicot, who confessed in court that he had raped her and recruited over the internet more than 50 men from Mazan and other neighboring towns to also rape her in her home while she was unconscious.
And while Dominique admitted to the charges against him, most of the other men on trial denied that what they did to Giséle was rape, because they claimed they had her husband’s consent and thought it was an open marriage sex game. The court dismissed that argument.
Dominique, from 2011 to 2020, supplied tranquilizers and sleeping pills to his wife, unbeknownst to her; he crushed them in her meals and drinks, which caused blackouts and memory loss.
He was discovered in 2020, when the Police showed Giséle pictures found on her husband’s computer hard drive, after he was arrested for taking upskirt photos of women in a supermarket.
Giséle was unaware of the horrors her husband was committing. “I thought we were a close couple,” she said in statements to the court.
Police seized two cell phones, two cameras, his electronic devices and his computer, before releasing him on bail. Around 300 photographs and a video of an unconscious woman being sexually assaulted by multiple people were found on the devices.
They also found Skype messages in which the man bragged about drugging his wife and invited other men to have sex with her while she was under the effects of tranquilizers.
During the investigation, the police found more than 20 thousand videos and photographs in a folder labeled “abuse”. The compilation began in 2011, and the list of suspects grew to 83.
According to the investigating judge’s report, Dominique met most of the suspects in a chat room on a well-known unmoderated French website that is implicated in more than 23,000 police cases in France alone between 2021 and 2024. The site, luckily, was shut down and the owner was arrested after a year and a half of investigation across Europe.
Police revealed lurid details. For example, the men were given precise instructions such as leaving the car at a certain distance from the house so as not to arouse suspicion and waiting an hour for the tranquilizers to take effect on Giséle.
Once in the house, they had to undress in the kitchen and warm their hands with hot water. The use of tobacco and perfume was forbidden for fear that the fragrances would wake the victim up.
They did not have to pay to participate, nor did they have to use condoms. While some raped her on one occasion, others are accused of having raped her at least six times.
Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison by a French court, guilty of aggravated rape charges for drugging and raping his ex-wife and recruiting more than 50 men to abuse her for 10 years.
The 5 judges ruled as follows:
· Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison for aggravated rape and making and distributing images of Giséle Pelicot and making and distributing sexual images of his eldest daughter, Caroline and the wives of his children: Aurore and Celine and raping the wife of Jean Pierre Marechal. Dominique will not be eligible for parole until he has served two thirds of his sentence.
· The other 50 defendants, ranging in age from 27 to 74, received sentences ranging from 3 to 15 years, less than what prosecutors asked for.
· 46 were convicted of rape.
· 2 were convicted of attempted rape
· 2 were convicted of sexual assault.
· After Pelicot, the highest sentence was for Romain Vandevelde, 63, a pensioner who visited the Pelicot home six times and who knew he was HIV positive. His sentence is 15 years.
· Jean Pierre Marechal was convinced by Dominique to follow in his steps and also drugged and raped his wife. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison, although the prosecution was asking for 17 years in prison.
· Hassan O, 30, is the only one of the defendants who absconded and was tried in absentia and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
· The lowest sentence, 3 years with 2 years suspended, was given to 69-year-old Joseph Cocco, who was convicted of groping and not rape.
This brave woman renounced anonymity during the trial and as she expressed: “Shame changes sides, from the victim to the rapist”. And although her decision is unusual, she stood her ground during the entire process.
There were about 50 men who abused her repeatedly and the paradoxical thing is that while they were prosecuted their faces were not shown out of respect. While the victim gave her face not only to her family, but to the whole world.
“I want all women who have been raped to say: ‘Mrs. Pelicot did it, I can too’,” but she admits that behind her strength there is also a field of ruins and that is what has made her the heroine in this terrible story.
And even despite the horror of what she has lived through, Giséle has a positive message to share: “I am confident in our ability to seek together a future in which men and women alike can live in harmony”.
Traducción del español: Catalina Oviedo Brugés
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