Rape Victim and 51 Defendants in Court Including her Husband
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| Gisèle Pelicot, 71, arriving at court in Avignon, France, in September to testify against her former husband.Lewis Joly/Associated Press |
By Ségolène Le Stradic and Catherine Porter
Reporting from Paris
The New York Times
Since the very beginning, the trial in the southern city of Avignon has riveted, and stunned, France. Dozens of men stand accused of raping a drugged woman. The man accused of masterminding the alleged abuse was her own husband, Dominique Pelicot. He is accused of drugging her, raping her and inviting the other men to join him.
Prosecutors say that, for almost a decade, Mr. Pelicot drugged his wife, Gisèle, 71, to rape her and filmed the abuse. Mr. Pelicot has pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him, including aggravated rape and drugging.
On Tuesday, Mr. Pelicot testified for the first time during the trial.
“She didn’t deserve this, I recognize that,” he said in tears from the stand. He later addressed his wife, who looked directly at him. “I regret what I did and ask for forgiveness, even if it unforgivable.”
Ms. Pelicot has said that she has no memory of the abuse but that, over the years, she began to experience frightening, unexplained symptoms.
She said she lost hair and weight, at times spoke incoherently and suffered memory blackouts. She feared she was developing Alzheimer’s or a brain tumor.
In 2020, the police investigated Mr. Pelicot after three women said he had tried to film up their skirts in a supermarket. The police then seized electronic devices from his house and found thousands of videos or pictures of rapes and other sexual abuse. Using the photographs and videos, the police spent the next two years identifying and charging other suspects.
Here’s some background on the case.
Why is this case so different?
Much about the scope of the case is unusual. How long prosecutors say the abuse went on. The number of defendants. The variety of their ages, professions and backgrounds.
The case has widened perceptions of who might commit sexual crimes. “Sexual offenders are often imagined as being dysfunctional misfits, when, in reality, they are Mr. Everyman,” said Audrey Darsonville, a professor of criminal law at the University of Nanterre and an expert on rape. “That’s what this trial reminds us.”
In addition, under French rules, Ms. Pelicot could have kept the trial and its sordid accusations private. Instead, she chose to make it public in the hope that it would shed light on drug-facilitated assault.
Who is charged with what?
Of the 51 defendants, who are between 26 and 74 years old, 48 of them, including Mr. Pelicot, are charged with the aggravated rape of Ms. Pelicot. One is charged with sexually assaulting her, a lesser offense, and another with attempted rape.
Mr. Pelicot is additionally charged with drugging and accused of “taking, recording or transmitting” sexual images of his daughter, daughter-in-law and former daughter-in-law.
Only one of the men is not charged with abusing Ms. Pelicot. Instead, that man is accused of following the same model and drugging his own wife to rape her. Mr. Pelicot is charged with raping the man’s wife while she was drugged.
More than a dozen of the men have pleaded not guilty. Many who dispute the facts say they were tricked into having sex with Ms. Pelicot, lured by her husband for a playful three-way encounter and told she was pretending to sleep because she was shy.
Who will judge the trial, and what could the punishments be?
The trial is taking place before five professional judges. There is no jury, following a 2019 law that entrusts to regional criminal courts the trials of crimes punishable by 15 or 20 years, such as rape or robbery. To speed up the proceedings, these courts use only magistrates, not juries.
The accused all face up to 20 years in prison, which is the maximum sentence for rape in France unless the victim is tortured or killed.
What has happened at the trial so far?
The first day was devoted to addressing whether the trial would be open to the public, which was important to Ms. Pelicot. The judges ruled in favor of an open trial.
The following two days were spent reading the statement of facts and explaining how the yearslong investigation was conducted.
On the fourth day, Ms. Pelicot testified. She told the court that over the 50 years of their relationship, she had trusted him implicitly and had what she considered a normal sex life. “I thought we were a strong couple,” Ms. Pelicot said. “We had everything to be happy.”
She then recounted the point at which her life fell apart, one afternoon in 2020 when the police showed her pictures of what they said was her husband abusing her. She said she contemplated suicide. “I don’t know how I survived,” she told the courtroom.
The next day in court, Mr. Pelicot’s daughter, who goes by the pen name Caroline Darian, testified, saying that after being shown photos of herself asleep that she does not remember being taken, she suspects her father drugged her, and possibly abused her, too. His lawyer says he denies that accusation.
“What can you do for a person like me to heal?” his daughter asked the court, adding, “How do you rebuild from the ashes?”
Later in the trial, a group of lawyers said it would press charges over threats that some defendants and their families received after pictures showing some of their faces and a list of their names circulated on social media.
Can photographs be taken in the courtroom?
The court forbids any photographs of victims or accused people without their written consent. Through their lawyers, Ms. Pelicot and her children have given their consent, which is why they appear in photographs from the court. The defendants have not.
What can we expect moving forward?
The court is expected to hear testimony about each of the defendants over time, trying to work through the cases against five to eight of them each week, according to a provisional timeline set by the court.
The trial is expected to last into December, although the schedule is subject to change.
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