"Used like a rag doll": calm and determined, in front of her torturer husband and the 51 other men accused of raping her for ten years , Gisèle Pelicot told five magistrates about the ordeal she was subjected to for ten years, on the fourth day of her trial at the Avignon court.
For a decade, the 72-year-old woman was drugged by her husband who then had her raped by strangers, witnessing and filming the violence, which took place in the town of Mazan.
A nightmare - which is shocking French public opinion - that lasted until November 20, 2020, when the police of Carpentras, in the department of Vaucluse, summoned her to the police station, after having caught her husband filming women at the supermarket and after having found thousands of images of violence on his PC.
To the investigators who questioned her, the woman, still unaware, confirmed that she was indeed the wife of Dominique Pelicot, a "chic guy, a super husband", without suspecting anything. Then they showed her those images. "I saw myself inert, in bed, while they raped me. Horror scenes".
The woman chose to participate in the trial involving her husband and 50 other men without anonymity, to set an "example" to all women victims of violence who do not have the courage to report it.
In her testimony, Gisèle spoke of the first time she saw the videos taken by her husband, during interviews with investigators. "One more atrocious than the other," she explained, describing "scenes of barbarity, of rape. I was sacrificed on the altar of vice."
The police found a total of about 4,000 photos and videos, meticulously stored and catalogued by her husband. Images of about 200 acts of violence suffered over ten years.
Among the defendants, of all ages, categories and types of people, there are firefighters, craftsmen, nurses, journalists, prison guards. Single, married, divorced. Most of them participated in the violence only once, others returned up to six times and in most cases they did not even wear a condom. The victim's husband testified that "everyone knew" that his wife was drugged without his knowledge.
