By Henry Samuel and Iona Cleave
Paris: Finally, France’s most notorious rapist broke his silence.
Dominique Pelicot cut a frail and pathetic figure as he entered the Vaucluse criminal court in Avignon, trembling, with a cane and frequently in tears to tell a packed room: “I am a rapist, like everyone else concerned in this courtroom.”
By contrast, the defiant woman he drugged and recruited men to rape over a decade at their Provence home as he filmed them was greeted with applause and cries of “We’re with you” outside the court in southern France.
Gisele Pelicot exits the Avignon court house, in Avignon, southern France on Tuesday.Credit: AP
Gisele Pelicot has become a feminist heroine for waiving her right to anonymity to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.
It is now three weeks into a public trial that has captured the world’s attention due to its scale and perversity.
Pelicot, 71, said he took full responsibility for his depraved crimes, all meticulously filmed and stored on a computer hard drive under a file called “Abuse”.
“I recognise the facts in their entirety,” he said as he was cross-examined for hours before 50 other men, all accused of “aggravated rape” of his wife, also 71, over a period of 10 years. He faces 20 years in prison if found guilty.
“She did not deserve this,” he added.
There were disapproving murmurs in the courtroom as he claimed the 50 other defendants in the mass trial “knew everything” – 35 of the suspects deny rape.
His wife, who has initiated divorce proceedings, and their three children, two sons and a daughter, looked on impassively.
Ill health had forced the presiding judge to adjourn proceedings last week and on Monday.
The sons of Gisele Pelicot, Florian, right, David, left, and her daughter Caroline Darian, centre, arrive in court earlier this month.Credit: AP
Pelicot had been suffering from a bladder stone and kidney infection. But medical experts deemed him able to appear with a comfortable chair. He spoke with frequent pauses.
While the hearing started with a promise of total transparency, as the day unfolded, Pelicot’s refusal to admit he drugged and took photos of his daughter, Caroline Darian, sparked scenes of high drama as she stormed out of court.
“Caroline, I never drugged you or raped you ... I never did that,” he insisted.
“You’re a liar,” she shouted as she left the room. “I’m going to throw up,” she went on. “I’ll kill him.”
By contrast, Gisele Pelicot, who wore dark glasses, remained cool throughout.
Experts warned that Dominique Pelicot was a “canny manipulator” and that the court should take what he says with a large pinch of salt.
Given his Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde split personality, they said, it allowed him to act as genial patriarch by day and depraved rapist who invited strangers, one with HIV, into their home to commit 92 rapes.
But he launched straight into an emotional apology.
“I am guilty of what I have done. I ask my wife, my children, my grandchildren … to please accept my apologies. I ask for forgiveness, even if it is unforgivable,” Pelicot said.
“Even if it’s paradoxical, I never considered my wife to be an object, unfortunately the videos show the opposite.”
People gather in Paris in support of Gisele Pelicot who was allegedly drugged by her ex-husband and raped by dozens of men while unconscious.Credit: AP
In tears, he added: “I was crazy about her, she had become everything. I loved her well for 40 years and badly for 10. I ruined everything, I should never have done it.
“I was very happy with her. I had three children and grandchildren that I never touched.
“My wife had a heart of gold. I was way out of line.”
By way of explanation for his decision to drug his wife for sex, Pelicot said: “I had a fantasy of sharing my wife … My wife was resistant to swinging, that’s why I put her to sleep.”
Then it was Gisele Pelicot’s turn to respond to the man she thought she knew until the day a policeman showed her shocking images of strangers abusing her comatose body like a “rag doll”.
“For me, it’s difficult to hear what Mr Pelicot has just said,” she stated. “I’ve lived with a man for 50 years ... I never imagined for a single second that he could have committed these acts of rape and barbarity.
“Not for a single second did I doubt this man. I would have given him both my hands to cut off. I trusted him completely. I was completely mistaken.”
Pelicot told the court that childhood trauma – he says he was raped by a male nurse aged nine and forced to perform a sex act on a mentally handicapped woman as a teenage apprentice – had created an “A side and B side” with the latter controlled by “addictions”.
“The addiction got the better of me, the need kept growing,” he said.
“You’re not born this way. You become it.”
The pensioner also revealed he started planning the assaults after becoming “totally idle” in his retirement and turning to the internet to enlist dozens of strangers to rape his wife in her own bed.
He came up with a “final solution” to give her a dose of anxiety-reducing pills in meals to send her to sleep.
When reminded that he placed his wife under risk of death – one of the defendants who raped her six times has HIV and she had a car crash due to the effect of the drugs – he insisted he asked each to provide tests but one lied.
Pelicot denied defendants’ key claims that they were under his sway.
“They agreed to undress in the kitchen with full knowledge of the facts,” replied Pelicot.
There was a “tripod and a camera” in the room for all to see, Pelicot said, insisting that his co-accused knew they were being filmed.
“First of all, [filming] was a bit of fun, but it was also an insurance measure. Today, thanks to that, we can find those who took part,” he said.
Repeating a phrase employed by his wife earlier in the trial, he said: “I didn’t put a gun to their heads. The only question they asked was how much?”
He added that no money had changed hands though some tried to blackmail him.
His assertions sparked tension among the co-defendants, who clearly disagree with his account.
“So these people came to commit a crime without a condom, left traces that could identify them, and knowingly agreed to be filmed?” said one defence lawyer.
“I told them I would clean her up afterwards,” said the pensioner.
“And that was enough for them to think that they would never be bothered by the law,” said the lawyer sarcastically.
Some of the accused have admitted he told them he was drugging his then-wife, while others claim they believed they were participating in a swinger couple’s fantasy.
Seventeen are in custody, as is Pelicot himself, while 32 other defendants are attending as free men.
One co-defendant is being tried in absentia.
The suspects include a fireman, a male nurse, a prison guard and a journalist.
The tensest moments were when Pelicot was grilled over photos of his daughter and grandchildren found on his computer.
His daughter had previously testified that her father had taken nude images of her sleeping and said she believes he drugged her.
“Do you recognise that it was you who took this photo?” asked her lawyer.
“No, it wasn’t me,” her father shot back.
“You’re lying!” shouted Darian from across the room.
“Can’t you act like a man and tell the truth? Don’t you understand that your daughter is suffering, that her distress is crying out?” said her lawyer in angry tones.
“I’ve never touched a child,” he insisted despite creating a photo montage of his partially nude sleeping daughter in someone else’s underwear and nude pictures of his wife under a file called: “My slut and her daughter”.
He said: “I can understand her doubts, but nothing happened at all.”
The trial continues.
The Telegraph, London
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