Dominique Pelicot, one of the worst sex offenders in modern French history, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging his then wife, Gisèle, and inviting dozens of men to rape her in her home in the south of France over almost a decade.
The historic trial of 51 men was held in public after Gisèle Pelicot waived her right to anonymity so that “shame could change sides”.
In her first public comments after the verdict, Gisèle Pelicot said she had found the trial “very difficult” and thanked all those who had supported her. She said she respected the court and its decision, and that in waiving her anonymity she had been thinking of her grandchildren. “Because they are the future, it is also for them that I led this fight,” she said.
“I’m also thinking of the many victims who are not recognised, whose stories often remain in the shadows. I want you to know that we share the same battle.” She was greeted with cheers by crowds outside the court in Avignon as she left the building.
Alongside Dominique Pelicot, guilty verdicts were returned on Thursday for all the accused men including a nurse, a soldier, a journalist, a prison warden and delivery drivers, aged from 26 to 74. Forty-seven were convicted of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault.
Pelicot’s co-defendants received jail terms of between three and 15 years. Two of these men had their jail terms suspended.
Some of the sentences handed down by the panel of judges were lower than those that had been suggested by the state prosecutor. “Shame!” shouted one feminist campaigner outside the court as the sentences were delivered.
Gisèle Pelicot, a 72-year-old retired logistics manager, had looked on with her sons and daughter as the men’s sentences were read out by the head judge. She has been hailed as a feminist hero worldwide for opening the doors to the trial, and members of the public outside the courts have cheered daily for the woman who said she was “determined that things change in this society”, in particular the “macho, patriarchal society that trivialises rape”.
Dominique Pelicot, 72, a retired electrician and former estate agent, was given the maximum sentence of 20 years for drugging and raping his then wife and inviting men to rape her when she was in a comatose state. The court heard that he crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her mashed potato, coffee or ice-cream and invited dozens of men to rape her over a nine-year period from 2011 in the village of Mazan, Provence, where the couple had retired.
After videos of the rapes by him and other men were found meticulously categorised on his computer hard drive in a file labelled “abuse”, Dominique Pelicot admitted the charges in court, telling judges: “I am a rapist.”
He was also convicted of placing hidden cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms in his own home and that of his family to make and distribute naked images of his adult daughter and the wives of his sons.
Fifty other men were on trial alongside Dominique Pelicot.
Charly Arbo, 30, a former vineyard worker who raped Gisèle Pelicot on six occasions, including on her 66th birthday when he was 24, was sentenced to 13 years in prison. Video evidence showed he also proposed drugging and raping his own mother with Dominique Pelicot, but he said he did not go through with it.
Romain Vandevelde, 63, a former forklift driver who raped Gisèle Pelicot on six occasions over six months between 2019 and 2020, was sentenced to 15 years. He had known he was HIV positive at the time of the alleged rapes and had not worn a condom. His lawyer said that because he had been on HIV treatment since his diagnosis in 2004 he had an undetectable viral load and could not transmit the virus.
Cédric Grassot, a software technician who used to run a record shop in Avignon, was sentenced to 12 years for raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home in 2017. During the trial, he had turned to Gisèle Pelicot in court, and said: “I was your rapist. I was your torturer.”
Jean-Pierre Maréchal, 63, a former lorry driver, was sentenced to 12 years for using the same technique to drug and rape his own wife, and organising for Pelicot to rape her with him.
