The ‘monster of Avignon’ — Dominique Pélicot

Dominique Pélicot, the man at the center of the French mass rape case of Gisèle Pélicot, has testified in court and admitted he is guilty of drugging his wife of 50 years into unconsciousness, then inviting men to rape her while he filmed the acts.
The 71-year-old former electrician faces multiple charges including rape, gang rape and privacy breaches resulting from his recording and disseminating of sexual images.
He took the stand and told the judge: “I am a rapist just like all the others in this room.”
Pélicot told the court that he had wanted his wife to open their marriage and participate in partner swaps. She refused. That refusal, combined with his own sexual abuse during his youth, is what triggered his deplorable behavior, he said. Psychologist Annabelle Montagne told the court in Avignon that she interviewed Pélicot in December 2020 — a month and a half after he was taken into custody — where he admitted to carrying out the campaign of abuse of his wife, Gisèle.
“Pélicot said: ‘My wife and I had a discussion about swinging but she didn’t agree so I drugged her,’” the psychologist recounted. To the court, Gisèle Pélicot said the topic had come up at a nightclub, but she said she “didn’t want to get involved.”
Pélicot also told the courtroom that he was asking his wife, his children and his grandchildren to accept his apologies, saying he regretted his actions. “I ask for your forgiveness,” he said, “even if it is not forgivable.” When asked by one of the attorneys present if he thought he would win back Gisèle, he said, ”It is important to have hope,” reports Reuters. “I loved her well for 40 years and badly for 10,” he said. Gisèle Pélicot began divorce proceedings as soon as she found out about her husband’s abuses.
In the courtroom, Pélicot said that he wanted to “prove that my wife was a victim and not an accomplice, to prove that this was completely without her knowledge.” While some of the defendants admitted guilt to the investigators, others have said they believed they were enacting a couple’s fantasy and that Gisèle Pélicot had in fact consented to sex. “When they came, they already knew everything. They all knew how this went about before the meetings,” said Pélicot. Some of the defendants appeared angry in the courtroom, with one of them shouting, “He manipulated us!”
One man told investigators “it was like raping a corpse,” but many told police they believed the wife was pretending to be asleep, a swinger who was a willing participant. Others said it was sufficient that the husband consented. While many are charged with raping Gisèle Pelicot one time, others are charged with as many as six assaults. Le Figaro newspaper reported that 35 men said they did not consider their actions to be rape, and only 14, when confronted with the images, said they regretted what they did, according to NBC News.
After hearing his confession, Gisèle Pélicot, who opted for a public trial, something rarely seen in France, said: “It is difficult to hear it. For fifty years, I lived with a man who I would never have imagined for a single second that he could do these acts. I had complete confidence in this man.” Pélicot was applauded by supporters as she left the courtroom, some of whom carried signs saying “We are all Giséle” and “Our bodies are not objects.” The trial “has become a symbol of the worst that male violence can do,” Anne-Cécile Mailfert, president of Fondation des Femmes, told NBC News.
Police identified 92 rapes committed by 83 men ranging in age from 26 to 74. They were able to identify 51 perpetrators, not including Pélicot, while 32 men remain unidentified. Fifty-one men are on trial together, with one additional man being tried in absentia because he has not been located. The accused men fill the benches of the court. Eighteen of them sit in two glass boxes, one built especially for the trial, reports The New York Times. The rest arrive daily, hiding their faces behind medical masks and baseball hats pulled low over their heads, walking past a growing line of journalists and spectators.
There is one man on trial who is not charged with assaulting Gisèle Pélicot. Jean-Pierre Maréchal, 63, a retired truck driver, obtained drugs from Dominique Pélicot and copied his methods, spiking his wife’s food with drugs and tweaking the dose until he got it right. Maréchal is charged with repeatedly raping his wife and offering her up to Dominique Pélicot, who is allegedly recorded in at least three of the 12 assaults involving the woman, now 53, a mother of five. Maréchal’s wife has not pressed charges against her husband.