**Trigger Warning: This article discusses sexual assault**
Gisèle Pelicot thought she was losing her mind. She was only in her sixties but memory lapses, strange gynaecological issues, weight loss and difficulty controlling her arm convinced her that she was succumbing to a mystery illness. She was horrified to wake up one morning with a new haircut, so she rushed to her hairdresser, who told her she’d been in the day before. She couldn’t remember saying goodbye to her adult children when they came to visit. She was so scared of these blackouts that she stopped driving and stopped taking the train to visit her family, in case she missed her stop.
Her devoted husband of nearly 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, stayed by her side, driving her to specialist appointments, scans and supported her in seeking a diagnosis for what she thought was Alzheimer’s. Never in her – or, for that matter, her doctors’ – wildest dreams did she imagine he was the man causing her mystery illness.
Between 2011 and 2020, Dominique had been drugging his wife and recruiting strange men to come over and rape her unconscious body. He would crush sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication and slip them into Gisèle’s dinner or a glass of wine, then message his guest, who he’d told to wait in a nearby car park.
They were instructed to warm their hands under water or against the radiator so their cold touch wouldn’t startle her. They couldn’t smell of anything, not cologne, not cigarettes, lest it rouse her. They were told to flee if she so much as moved her arm. Dominique would then film as the man (who was not told to wear a condom – Gisèle now has four sexually transmitted diseases) raped his wife as she was curled up in a foetal position – essentially a corpse. At the end of the night, Dominique would clean his wife’s body.
Since September 2, Dominique and 50 other men have been on trial in the southern France town of Avignon, and the proceedings are open to the public at Gisèle’s request. She has appeared with her three adult children, steadfast in her determination for justice despite being in “ruins”. “When people see me, they say: ‘She’s a strong woman’. The facade looks solid, but inside, it’s a pile of ruins. Everything needs to be rebuilt.”
Gisèle’s story has horrified not only France – which is still reckoning with its questionable attitude towards women and consent – but the entire world. Until the case went to trial, Gisèle, who is now 72, was anonymous. In a revealing article from June 2023, in which most of the men were named and quoted, the French newspaper La Monde referred to her only as Françoise P. But Gisèle waived her right to anonymity. She wants women to know they do not need to feel any shame after being assaulted.
How Did Gisèle Pelicot Find Out?
Dominique Pelicot, who is now 71, is accused of drugging and raping his wife and inviting at least 72 other men to rape her between 2011 to 2020. Police retrieved about 20,000 images Dominique took of the rapes. He is now on trial with 50 other defendants who are also accused of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault. There were so many defendants that a second glass box had to be built to contain them all in the courtroom.
Dominique has not tried to maintain his innocence. His lawyer reportedly said that Dominique “always declared himself guilty”, adding, “I put her to sleep, I offered her, and I filmed.”
Gisèle’s husband had been meticulous in his documenting of the abuse, storing footage on his computer. It would have continued to go unnoticed had he not been reported to police for taking upskirt photos of two women at a supermarket in 2020. Gisèle accompanied her husband to the police station, thinking it was just a blip that they could get past, until police began asking her about her sex life. “I told him I had never practised partner-swapping or threesomes. I said I was a one-man woman. I couldn’t bear any man’s hand on me other than my husband’s,” she said. Then, the police showed her photos on her husband’s phone of a man and woman on a bed. She didn’t recognise herself until the police pointed out that it was her bedroom. “It was hard to recognise myself. … It was unbearable. I was inert, in my bed, and a man was raping me.
“My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart,” she said. “Everything I had built up over 50 years.” She says she wanted to end her life, but needed to tell her three adult children that their father had been arrested. She said her daughter’s howl is “etched into my memory”.
Later, Gisèle and Dominique’s daughter – who uses the pen name Caroline Daian – discovered that her father had photographed her too. In 2022, she wrote a memoir about her family’s horrific experience. Domonique is also accused of violating the privacy of his two daughters-in-law.
Gisèle left the house with two suitcases (“All that was left for me of 50 years together”) and started divorce proceedings, which were finalised on the first day of Dominique’s trial.
The Perfect Couple
Gisèle thought she and Dominique were a “strong couple” with a normal sex life. They met when they were 19, were married at 21 and had three children and seven grandchildren. “We weren’t rich but we were happy,” she said. “Even our friends said we were the ideal couple.”
When their children were growing up, Gisèle was the breadwinner, working as manager in Paris for 20 years. When she retired in 2013, they moved to Mazan, where their children and grandchildren would stay on summer holidays and they would host dinners on the terrace, have dance competitions and play Trivial Pursuit, according to their daughter’s memoir.
Dominique and Gisèle were seemingly the perfect couple. Gisèle was friendly with her neighbour, who loved to talk about cycling and who she’d run into at the bakery. She had no idea he was coming over to rape her under the cover of drugged darkness.
Who Is Dominique Pelicot?
A trained electrician, Dominique has been described as a typical man next door. He was an avid cyclist, he drove the kids to school, picked his daughter up late from parties and was the one she ran to when she needed consoling. He was the “perfect doting dad”, his daughter wrote.
Dominique reportedly used the now-disbanded website Coco.fr – which was known as a “hunting ground for predators” due to the anonymous nature of the platform – to recruit strangers to have sex with his unconscious wife. The website was associated with 23,000 police cases in France between 2021 and 2024, until French courts closed it down in June. Dominique is said to have exchanged messages in a forum called A son insu, which translates to “Without her knowing”.
Of an evening, Dominique would create what toxicologists called a “cocktail” of medication: Temesta (used to treat anxiety and seizures), Zolpidem (for insomnia), and hypnotic and anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) drugs and add it to her food or drink.
He reportedly told a psychologist that he committed the abuse because Gisèle had refused to join him in swinging or invite other people into their bedroom. In his messages to the men, he apparently used the word “rape” and let them know that he was giving Gisèle sleeping pills so that he could do things to her that she would otherwise refuse.
On September 17, he told the court that when his wife thought she was developing Alzheimer’s, Dominique let her believe it. “I tried to stop [drugging her], but my addiction was stronger, the need was growing,” he said. “I was trying to reassure her, I betrayed her trust. I should’ve stopped sooner, in fact I should’ve never started at all.”
He said he “became perverted” in 2010 – a year before the abuse was thought to have started – when a male nurse he’d met online suggested he drug his wife with a sedative and show him how to administer it, and also showed Dominique photos of drugged women. “That’s when it all clicked,” Dominique said. “Everything started then.”
It’s also been reported that Dominique is accused of attacking a real estate agent, 19-year-old Estella, in 1999. Le Monde reported that Estella was assaulted by a man who had shown up to view an apartment. She escaped, and when Dominique was arrested for an earlier supermarket upskirting incident in 2010, police took his DNA and found that it matched that found on Estella’s shoe.
After that discovery, police officers reportedly connected him to the unsolved rape and murder of another real estate agent, 23-year-old Sophie Narme, who was drugged, raped and stabbed in the chest in 1991.
Le Monde reports that Dominique admitted to attacking Estella out of “impulse” but denies murdering Sophie.
Not All Men, But …
… her husband, her neighbour, a firefighter, a former police officer, a local councillor, nurses, a soldier, a journalist, truck drivers and a civil servant: more than 70 men aged 26 to 73 when they were arrested. Of the 50 who are on trial, 18 are in custody and 32 are attending the trial as free men. One is yet to be found and will be tried in absentia. There are reportedly up to 30 more men in the recordings who detectives were unable to trace. Most of them face up to 20 years in jail if found guilty of aggravated rape. Some have been convicted and even jailed for domestic violence before. Five of them reportedly face charges for possessing child sexual abuse material. Many of them are in relationships and have children. One of them arrived late to the courthouse because he was dropping his son at school.
Gisèle testified while all 51 men sat behind her in the courtroom. She has seen footage of the rapes, but this trial is the first time she will watch them in the presence of her attackers. Only 15 of them have pleaded guilty to rape, others have said they were tricked by Dominique.
One reportedly went so far as to claim “consent by delegation” – in other words, her husband said it was okay, so that’s enough. “He does what he wants with his wife,” the man apparently said. “As long as the husband was there, there was no rape”. (Le Monde reported that this man was sentenced to 18 years in prison in April 2023 for rape and violence against former partners.)
On September 10, right before he was due to testify, Dominique was admitted to hospital with kidney stones and a kidney infection. There were concerns the trial would be adjourned, but a week later he was back in court. “I am a rapist,” he admitted on September 17. “I am a rapist like the others in this room. They all knew, they cannot say the contrary.” He also asked his wife for forgiveness, saying, “She did not deserve this … I was very happy with her … I ask for forgiveness, even though it is unacceptable.” Gisèle didn’t react.
Gisèle is adamant that rape is not a strong enough word. She told the court it was torture. “When you see that woman drugged, mistreated, a dead person on a bed – of course the body is not cold, it’s warm, but it’s as if I’m dead,” she said. She added that none of them were tricked by her husband. “These men entered my home, respected the imposed protocol,” she said.
On September 17, the day Dominique defined himself as a rapist, she called the men “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 asked. “When does a husband decide for his wife?”
Why Did Gisèle Waive Her Right To Anonymity?
“I speak for all women who are drugged and don’t know about it. I do it on behalf of all women who will perhaps never know,” Gisèle said. Remaining anonymous is “what her attackers would have wanted”, her lawyers added. After her divorce, Gisèle changed her surname but is using her married name for the trial.
“She wants people to know what happened to her and believe she has no reason to hide. … Whether one likes it or not, this trial goes beyond the limits of this courtroom. And going behind closed doors also means asking my client to be locked in a place with those who attacked her.”
Gisèle told the court she has been “humiliated” by the defence lawyers, who tried to play off the men’s crimes as errors of judgement, or that they assumed she was pretending to be asleep in some sort of game. “I have been called an alcoholic, a conspirator of Mr Pelicot,” she said.
She added that she felt like she was the one being accused of a crime, and added that she understands why women hesitate to file rape complains.
Only one of the men involved in the trial is not charged with the rape, assault or attempted rape of Gisèle. Instead, he’s accused of being a copy-cat, drugging his own wife to rape her. Dominique is charged with raping that man’s wife, too.
Gisèle Pelicot Case: The Latest Updates
Between now and December, the defendants will appear in small groups before a panel of five judges. That’s a lot of testimonies. We’ll keep an eye on them here.
“I am guilty of rape”
On September 19, we heard from the first defendant who was not Gisèle’s ex-husband. Lionel R, a 44-year-old supermarket worker and father of three, told the court that while he “never told myself: ‘I will rape that woman,'” when he went to the Pelicot house in December 2018, he has since realised that “I’m guilty of rape.”
“Since I never obtained Mrs Pelicot’s consent, I have no choice but to accept the facts,” Lionel said, and offered Gisèle an apology: “I am sorry, I can only imagine the nightmare you’ve lived through … and I am part of this nightmare. I know my apologies won’t change what happened, but I wanted to tell you that.”
Despite saying sorry, he then went on to attempt to justify his actions and shirk some of the blame onto Dominique. “If I had known she wasn’t aware [of what would happen], I wouldn’t have gone there,” he said. “I should have checked that she was okay with it. I didn’t talk to her, so I could not get her consent. I feel guilty for what I did.”
While Dominique testified a day earlier that all of the men knew they were being invited to rape his wife, Lionel said Dominique had been unclear, and he thought he was part of a game. “There was talk of medical drugs. Sometimes of her taking them and sometimes of him administering them to her,” he said. “I didn’t ask myself too many questions. I never imagined that she might not be part of this game. That was my first huge error.”
Defendants’ wives and girlfriends suspect they were drugged too
Emilie O’s ex-partner, Hugues M, is charged with attempting to rape Gisèle. Now, 33-year-old Emilie can’t be sure he didn’t do the same to her. “I was manipulated and lived a lie,” she told the court. “I’m still questioning everything.”
Emilie and Hughes met online, and she described how he was respectful and considerate towards her at first, but she eventually learnt that he needed “adrenaline that he only found by riding a motorbike and engaging in sexual relations”. It was a few days before her birthday in October 2019 that police told Emilie that Hughes was accused of raping Gisèle. “I didn’t believe them; I was stunned, shocked. I asked to see the photo and then I realised that it wasn’t a nightmare,” she said.
She’s now worried she was also drugged and assaulted. She woke up one night in 2019 when Hughes was attempting to assault her, she told the court. She went to the police but said she was dismissed due to a “lack of material evidence”. Later in 2019 and in early 2020, she said she experienced “dizziness”, but investigators didn’t detect any substances at the time.
The youngest defendant missed the birth of his child because he was allegedly raping Gisèle
The youngest defendant is Joan K, who was 22 at the time of the assaults. A psychological profiler told the court that Joan missed the birth of his daughter, which happened on one of the two occasions he’s accused of sexually assaulting Gisèle. He and his partner met on the internet, but the court was told their relationship was tormented by “numerous” conflicts and “extramarital relations”. He and his partner separated before their daughter was born.
Some ex-partners are standing by their men
Many of the women who were in relationships with the defendants while they were allegedly raping Gisèle are sharing their disbelief that a person they love could be capable of such heinous behaviour. They’re in such a state of disbelief that they actually don’t believe it, even after some of the men confessed to them. Le Monde reports that three women testified and blamed “ex-wives, illness, the death of a son, depression, alcohol, Dominique Pelicot and the media. It’s impossible for them to blame their companions”.
Thierry P is accused of visiting the Pelicot home in 2020. He’s not in custody, but is one of the defendants attending the trial as a free man. His ex-wife, Corrine, told the court that she was in a state of shock when she was told what her former husband was accused of. They’d been separated for just a few weeks when the attack took place. The couple’s son was killed in a road accident, pushing Thierry into a deep depression, but before that, Corinne said, the family of four (including a daughter) was “very, very happy” and her husband was “very kind” and “always benevolent”. He never forced her when she turned down sex. “He had always been respectful, when it was no, it was no, he never insisted. So I absolutely don’t understand why he’s here today,” she said. “When they told me what he was accused of, I said, ‘Never in a million years, it’s not possible, it’s absolutely not like him.’ I asked him what had happened, but he couldn’t explain, he didn’t have the words.”
Fourty-four-year-old Samira’s ex Jérôme V was one of Dominique Pelicot’s most frequent visitors, appearing at the house six times in three months in 2020, not long after the couple met. Samira can’t understand why he felt the need to do what he did to Gisèle and she visits him regularly in prison, still trying to find answers. “We had a normal sex life, daily intercourse. For me, he had no reason to go elsewhere,” she told the court three times. “I’m not giving up, I’ve been looking for answers to my questions for three and a half years. I know he’s special, I keep digging to find out what made him do it,” she said, before adding that she wanted Dominique to know “that he didn’t just destroy his family, he destroyed a huge number of lives alongside it”.
Alexandra, a 28-year-old woman, got engaged to Simone M, 43, after he was released from pre-trial detention in April 2022. She was apparently cheerful when she told the court how her fiancé is “a good person”, “very caring”, who had “rekindled the impetus of joy” in her “slightly damaged life”. “He cooks, he cleans, he passes the tractor at my grandmother’s house. He’s got his heart in the right place,” she said. “I don’t know what the hell he’s doing in this story.”
Simone was apparently upfront with Alexandra about his involvement in the trial, but she wasn’t deterred. “He immediately explained to me what had happened in relation to the case, he was completely honest. It was afterward that I decided to get pregnant,” she said. They have a 16-month-old daughter. “He explained to me that he’d been involved in a very particular case, that a lady had been raped, but that he wasn’t one of them, that he’d gone to see, but it wasn’t at all what he thought, so he’d left straight away,” she told Gisèle’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau. “He didn’t go into detail, but I understood him perfectly well, I didn’t even look on the internet, I’m a trusting person, I trust him completely.” Babonneau responded, “We have videos of what he’s done.”
A Feminist Hero
Each morning when Gisèle arrives at the courthouse, a crowd of women are already waiting for her. Some have started arriving up to an hour and a half before the hearing starts to ensure they get a good spot in the room where the trial is being broadcast.
Gisèle has become something of an icon in France, where her now-signature auburn bob and round tortise-shell sunglasses appear in graffiti on walls, on protestor signs, and are splashed across daily newspapers and nightly TV.
There have been rallies, protests and marches in her honour, both in Paris and wider Europe. Women are crediting Gisèle with putting an end to the myth of the “monster rapist” by shining a light on how seemingly regular her attackers were, many of whom have wives and children. “A rapist is not someone in a parking lot at night,” she said.
Twenty-year-old student Océane Guichardon, told the New York Times outside the courthouse: “We came to support her — it’s feminine solidarity, really,” she said. “Gisèle is brave. Every time we see her leave the courthouse, her head is high.”
“I hear lots of women, and men, who say, ‘You’re very brave,’” said Gisèle. “I say it’s not bravery — it’s will and determination to change society.”
Gisèle Addresses The Court, Again
In late October, Gisèle Pelicot has addressed the court for the second time. Invited by presiding Judge Roger Arata to speak, Gisèle explained why she wanted to make the trial public. “I am expressing a desire to change society,” she said. “I wanted all women who are rape victims to say to themselves, ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, so we can do it too,’ It’s not us who should feel shame, but [the perpetrators]”.
She also expressed deep sympathy for the women whose partners, sons and brothers were on trial for sexually assaulting or raping Gisèle. She said she had listened to them describe their men as “exceptional” and that they did not seem capable of rape. She said she has gone through the same thing with her ex-husband. “I’m trying to understand how my husband, who was the perfect man, became like this. How my life changed,” Gisèle said. “For me, this betrayal is immeasurable. After 50 years together … I used to think I was going to be with this man until the end.”
Gisèle didn’t look at her ex-husband while she addressed him. “I have been preparing for this trial for four years. I still don’t understand why, I cannot understand how my life crumbled, how you could betray me like this … How you could let these men into my room,” she said. “I am a woman who is completely broken. I don’t know how I’m going to rebuild myself. I’m 72 soon and I’m not sure my life will be long enough to recover from this.”
Thirty of the 51 accused have spoken before the court so far, with most denying that they raped Gisèle and instead claiming that Dominique had tricked them and that it never occurred to them that she’d been drugged. Gisèle has listened to every one of their testimonies and has also sat through gruelling interrogations from 40 defense lawyers whose main tactic appears to be to discredit Gisèle and portray her as the guilty party. Several graphic images of Gisèle have been displayed in court in an attempt to show her as a willing participant, while Gisèle’s legal team has countered those by showing video footage of the assualts. In one of those videos, Gisèle is snoring while Cyril B (pictured below) assaults her. “You are telling me that you did not rape her?” lawyer Stéphane Babonneau asked. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he replied.
Update: November 27, 2024: After almost three months, the Pelicot rape trial—which heard Dominique Pelicot admit to drugging his wife of 50-years to facilitate her rape and sexual abuse by him and dozens of strangers—is coming to a conclusion.
Addressing the court on Monday local time, the prosecution demanded Dominique be given the maximum sentence of 20 years behind bars. Assistant state prosecutor Laure Chabaud called the sentence “long but not long enough given the gravity of the facts that were committed and repeated”.
Continuing, Chabaud added: “His search for pleasure was reflected in a desire to subjugate his wife, to humiliate and even degrade through his actions and words the person he cherished most in the world.”
The prosecution rejected the arguments of many men involved who claimed they did not realise they were raping Ms Pelicot. A final verdict is expected to be given by the court on December 20.
Dominique Pelicot, along with 50 other men on trial, have now been found guilty.
1800RESPECT is the national domestic, family, and sexual violence counselling, information and support service. Lifeline 13 11 14
This article originally appeared on Marie Claire Australia and is republished here with permission.
