The former wife of a French man accused of recruiting strangers to rape her while she was drugged has told a court she never consented and the men who allegedly assaulted her were “degenerates”.
Appearing at the trial of her former husband, Dominique Pelicot, and 50 men he allegedly invited to rape her, Gisèle Pelicot, 72, said: “I never, even for a single second, gave my consent to Mr Pelicot or those other men.”
Dominique Pelicot, 71, has admitted drugging his then-wife with sedatives and anti-anxiety medication to render her unconscious so that he and dozens of strangers who he recruited in online chatrooms could allegedly rape her between 2011 and 2020.
The 50 men, aged between 26 and 74, with professions ranging from fire officer to journalist, are alleged to have been recruited by Pelicot, who said they knew they were being invited to commit rape. Some of the accused men have admitted Pelicot told them he was drugging his then-wife, but others have said they believed they were participating in a couple’s organised game.
Gisèle Pelicot said she felt humiliated by questioning from defence lawyers who had argued that the men may have made an error of judgment, or thought she was drunk or pretending to be asleep and complicit.
“I have felt humiliated while I’ve been in this courtroom. I have been called an alcoholic, a conspirator of Mr Pelicot,” she said, adding her life had been “destroyed” for 10 years. “In the state I was in, I absolutely could not respond. I was in a comatose state; the videos show that.”
She said of the men on trial: “These men are degenerates. They committed rape … When they see a woman sleeping on her bed, no one thought to ask themselves a question? Don’t they have brains?”
She added: “When does a husband decide for his wife?”
Although she experienced unexplained memory lapses and gynaecological problems for years, Gisèle Pelicot said she had been unaware of the alleged rapes until police found images on her husband’s computer and told her.
Her ex-husband again asked for forgiveness from her in court, but she looked at the ground without reacting.
Asked about remarks by one defence lawyer who had said in court that “there’s rape and there’s rape” in a possible attempt to back up some of the men’s claim that they assumed they were participating in a couple’s game, Gisèle Pelicot said: “No, there are no different types of rape,” she said. “Rape is rape.”
The lawyer subsequently apologised to her, saying he had wanted to distinguish the legal definition of rape from the “media” definition. “I am sorry that these remarks hurt and shocked you,” he said.
The court was shown explicit images of Gisèle Pelicot who said she had had no knowledge of the photographs being taken by her husband, raising the issue of whether she could have been sedated when they were taken. She said: “These were taken without my knowledge, I am very surprised.”
Dominique Pelicot told the court he had taken the photos without her knowledge.
Defence lawyers asked Gisèle Pelicot if she understood that men who saw these kinds of photos online could think she wanted a sexual encounter, even while drugged. She said men could “ask whether I consented to intercourse”.
She said she felt she was being accused of being the guilty party in the courtroom, while the 50 men accused of rape alongside her husband sat in court observing. She said she understood why women hesitated about filing rape complaints.
Gisèle Pelicot has requested that the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.
The trial continues until December.
