AVIGNON, France — A 71-year-old French man acknowledged in court on Tuesday that over nearly a decade, he was drugging his wife at the time and inviting dozens of men to rape her, as well as raping her himself. He pleaded with her, and their three children, for forgiveness.
“Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,″ Dominique Pélicot told the court. “They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”
Dominique Pélicot’s testimony is the most important moment so far in a trial that has shocked and gripped France, and raised new awareness about sexual violence. Many also hope his testimony will shed some light — to try to understand the unthinkable.
While he previously confessed to investigators, the court testimony will be crucial for the panel of judges to decide on the fate of some 50 other men standing trial alongside him. Many deny having raped Gisèle Pélicot, saying they were manipulated by her then-husband or claiming they believed she was consenting.
Gisèle Pélicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France for agreeing to waive her anonymity in the case, letting the trial be public, and appearing openly in front of the media. She is expected to speak in court after her ex-husband’s testimony on Tuesday.
Under French law, the proceedings inside the courtroom cannot be filmed or photographed. Dominique Pélicot is brought to the court through a special entrance inaccessible for the media, because he and some other defendants are being held in custody during the trial. Defendants who are not in custody come to the trial wearing surgical masks or hoods to avoid having their faces filmed or photographed.
After days of uncertainty due to his medical state, Dominique Pélicot appeared in court Tuesday and told judges he acknowledged all the charges against him.
His much-awaited testimony was delayed by days after he fell ill, suffering from a kidney stone and urinary infection, his lawyers said.
Seated in a wheelchair, Pélicot spoke to the court for an hour, from his early life to years of abuse against his now ex-wife.
Expressing remorse, his voice trembling and at times barely audible, he sought to explain events that he said scarred his childhood and planted the seed of vice in him.
“One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert,” Pélicot told judges, after recounting, sometimes in tears, being raped by a male nurse in hospital when he was 9 years old and then being forced to take part in a gang rape at age 14.
Pélicot also spoke of the trauma endured when his parents took a young girl in the family, and witnessing his father’s inappropriate behavior toward her.
“My father used to do the same thing with the little girl,” he said. “After my father’s death, my brother said that men used to come to our house.”
At 14, he said, he asked his mother if he could leave the house, but “she didn’t let me.”
“I don’t really want to talk about this, I am just ashamed of my father. In the end, I didn’t do any better,” he said.
Asked about his feelings toward his wife, Pélicot said she did not deserve what he did.
“From my youth, I remember only shocks and traumas, forgotten partly thanks to her. She did not deserve this, I acknowledge it,” he said in tears.
At that moment, Gisèle Pélicot, standing across the room, facing him across a group of dozens of defendants sitting in between them, put her sunglasses back on.
Later, Dominique Pélicot said, “I was crazy about her. She replaced everything. I ruined everything.”
A security agent caught Pélicot in 2020 filming videos under women’s skirts in a supermarket, according to court documents. Police searched Pélicot’s house and electronic devices, and found thousands of photos and videos of men engaging in sexual acts with Gisèle Pélicot while she appears to lie unconscious on their bed.
With the recordings, police were able to track down a majority of the 72 suspects they were seeking.
Gisèle Pélicot and her husband of 50 years had three children. When they retired, the couple left the Paris region to move into a house in Mazan, a small town in Provence.
When police officers called her in for questioning in late 2020, she initially told them her husband was “a great guy,″ according to legal documents. They then showed her some photos. She left her husband and they are now divorced.
He faces 20 years in prison if convicted. Besides Pélicot, 50 other men, aged 26 to 74, are standing trial.
Bernadette Tessonière, a 69-year-old retiree who lives a half-hour drive from Avignon, where the trial is taking place, arrived outside the courthouse at 7:15 a.m. to make sure she would secure a seat in the closely watched case.
“How is it possible that in 50 years of communal life, one can live next to someone who hides his life so well? This is scary,” she said, while standing in a line outside the courthouse. “I don’t have much hope that what he did can be explained, but he is at least going to give some elements.”