When Gisèle Pelicot first started losing time, she feared a serious illness: She would randomly experience “total blackouts,” which left her unable to remember whole nights and days. Her hair began to fall out, she began shedding pounds, and eventually she became convinced she had “the beginnings of Alzheimer’s or a brain tumor,” the 71-year-old told a court in Avignon, France, last month. Her husband of nearly 50 years — Dominique Pelicot, whom she then considered the love of her life — drove her to appointments with specialists, though Gisèle wouldn’t discover the real cause until 2020, when Dominique was arrested after attempting to upskirt several women at a local grocery store. Searching his devices, police discovered a trove of some 20,000 videos and photos documenting repeated assaults on an unconscious woman, who turned out to be Gisèle. Dominique subsequently admitted to running a confounding scheme out of the couple’s bedroom: Having crushed sedatives into Gisèle’s food and drink, he would invite strangers he’d met online into their home to rape her, filming and neatly labeling the encounters for his archives.
Dominque has been charged with aggravated rape, drugging, and the violation of his wife’s privacy as well as his daughter’s and daughter-in-law’s: Alongside the images of Gisèle, police also found illicit images of the other women in his archives. While Dominique has insisted that he never touched his daughter, he has pleaded guilty on all counts pertaining to his wife. Now, 50 of the more than 90 men suspected of assaulting Gisèle are on trial, most of them facing charges of aggravated rape and the possibility of 20 years in prison.
For the most part, the accused have denied raping Gisèle, even as the court watches them on video, plainly performing sex acts on an unresponsive woman. Overwhelmingly, they have insisted that Dominique told them that his wife was a willing participant in a kinky game, indicating that they didn’t think to ask Gisèle or didn’t see anything strange about her being passed out. Many suggested that if the husband gave consent, then it couldn’t be rape. Gisèle, who has listened to each of her alleged abusers attempt to explain himself in court, doesn’t see it that way. Calling the men “degenerates,” she observed that none of them thought to check the facts with her. “When they see a woman sleeping on her bed, no one thought to ask themselves a question? Don’t they have brains?” she said, according to The Guardian. “When does a husband decide for his wife?”
Below, key testimony from each week of the trial.
How did so many men become involved in Dominique Pelicot’s scheme?
As detailed in court, Dominique found his candidates on the now-defunct online forum coco.gg, a platform involved in tens of thousands of crimes before French authorities finally shuttered it in June. He would typically message prospective participants in a chat room called “À son insu,” or “without her knowledge,” and explain that he and his wife like to engage in role-play: She would pretend to be asleep while a stranger had sex with her and he would film it so that they could watch the tape together later. Dominique’s chat history suggests he would sometimes get more explicit, telling his targets that he would sedate Gisèle, and even using the word “rape.” The ground rules he set for the men’s visits might also have suggested she wasn’t aware what was happening: When the accused arrived at the Pelicot home, Dominique made them strip before entering the couple’s bedroom. He forbid them from wearing cologne and told them they couldn’t show up smelling like smoke, evidently because any unusual scents might provoke Gisèle’s suspicion later on. He made them speak quietly, and often had them wait nearby until his wife had passed out.
In his testimony, Dominique claimed the men he solicited knew what they were getting into. “Today I maintain that I am a rapist, like those in this room,” he told the court, according to the New York Times. “They all knew her condition before they came, they knew everything. They cannot say otherwise.” Asking forgiveness from his wife for the “unforgivable,” he also suggested there was a silver lining to his documentation of every crime. “It was perversion, vice, but it was also an outstanding means of helping me remember certain people,” he explained of his footage, according to a local media report. Because of his recordings, he claimed, “we could find all those who participated.” All of whom, he added, came to his home of their own volition.
What have the men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot said in court?
Testimony from the accused began after Dominique himself took the stand. The first to speak was Jean-Pierre Marechal, who isn’t accused of raping Gisèle but has been jailed for carrying out Dominique’s blueprint on his own wife, Cilia. According to France24, Marechal told the court that he first met Dominique on coco.gg, where Dominique detailed his scheme and, eventually, asked to rape Marechal’s wife. The 63-year-old didn’t immediately accept but reportedly suggested that Dominique coaxed him into it. “If I had not met Mr. Pelicot, I would have never committed this act. He was reassuring, like a cousin,” he testified, according to the Global News. Dominique allegedly supplied the tranquilizers and would rape Cilia ten times, while Marechal watched. (Marechal is himself accused of raping, or trying to rape, Cilia on 12 occasions.) On what turned out to be their final meeting, Cilia reportedly woke up while Dominique was in the room, prompting the two men to sever communications.
Like Dominique — who testified to having been sexually assaulted at age 9, and made to witness a rape several years later — Marechal told the court he’d been sexually abused as a child. “We experienced terrible things from my father,” he said, according to CBS News. “My mother tried to protect us but she drank.” Like Dominique, Marechal also insisted he’d had a “happy life” with Cilia, who has not divorced him. “I regret my actions. I love my wife,” he told the court, adding that he hoped for a “tough punishment.”
“I’m in jail and I deserve it,” he said. “What I did is appalling. I’m a criminal and a rapist.”
One man considered going to the police, but “then life resumed its course; the next day I went to work very early, and that was that.”
After Marechal, the court heard from several other defendants. Lionel R., a 44-year-old father of three, said Dominique came to him, allegedly making “a rather unusual proposal to have sex with his wife.” Lionel R. said the invitation was issued online: “He tells me that he’s in a relationship,” the grocery-store worker said of Pelicot, according to France24. “He tells me that she’ll be asleep, talks to me about sleeping pills, tells me that she takes them or that he gives them to her, it’s not clear. I’m not asking too many questions, I was convinced it was a game at the time.” When he showed up at the Pelicot home in December 2018, he allegedly proceeded to rape Gisèle for half an hour while Dominique directed the scene in whispers, snapping to only when Gisèle stirred and Dominique “asked me to leave the room,” he said, per France 24. “I realized that there was a big problem in that she mustn’t wake up in front of me. I should have left and reacted much sooner.”
“I never told myself: ‘I will rape that woman,’” he told the court, according to The Guardian. But “since I never obtained Mrs. Pelicot’s consent, I have no choice but to accept the facts.” Lionel R. claimed that he “never imagined that she might not be part of this game,” but admitted he should have “checked that she was okay with it” or simply left when he saw she was unconscious. “I’m guilty of rape,” he said, before apologizing to Gisèle. “I can only imagine the nightmare you’ve lived through,” he said, “and I am part of this nightmare.”
A 74-year-old ex-fireman, Jacques C., reportedly told the court that he visited coco.gg in service of his “libertine” lifestyle. According to France 24, he testified that Dominique told him Gisèle would be drugged when he arrived at the couple’s home in February 2020. “I had this idea of a promiscuous couple, where the wife might be asleep, perhaps because she was a shy person,” he reportedly said. But Jacques C. claimed that he quickly knew something was off about the situation, because Gisèle showed “no reaction” when he “caressed” her naked body. He said that he performed oral sex on Gisèle but that “Dominique asked me to leave the room” when she appeared to respond. That, he said, “was a relief for me, so I got dressed. When he came back I told him I did not want to be there.” As he left, Jacques C. told the court, he considered going to the police, but “then life resumed its course; the next day I went to work very early, and that was that.”
“I am not a rapist. That’s too much for me to bear.”
The second group of men to testify gave similar accounts. Mathieu D. acknowledged he’d raped Gisèle, telling the court he only “realized” the encounter at the Pelicot home hadn’t been consensual when he was arrested, the AFP reports. He said Dominique told him he would give his wife drugs to make her sleep, so that the couple could “later watch the video together.” Another, Fabien S., said that “in the excitement,” he “didn’t pay attention” to the fact that Gisèle was unconscious, according to local media. Reportedly an alcoholic who was formerly unhoused, Fabien S. said he was a frequent user of coco.gg when he first encountered Dominique. When he arrived at their home in August 2018, he testified that he was “in the mood” and didn’t think Gisèle was drugged. He stayed for a quarter of an hour before leaving in a hurry, because he thought she “was going to wake up,” according to the local report. Nonetheless, he claimed he thought Gisèle was complicit in the idea. “I recognize the facts, but I didn’t come to rape her,” he reportedly said. “I wasn’t aware.”
Husamettin D. testified that although Dominique told him his wife had a sleep kink but liked to swing, he was still surprised by her state when he walked into the couple’s bedroom. When he began touching her, Husamettin D. said, she didn’t move at all. “I said, ‘She’s dead, your wife,’” he told the court, according to the AFP. Dominique then “said, ‘No, you’re imagining it,’” allegedly penetrating her so that “she lifted up her head a little,” Husamettin said. After that, Husamettin apparently continued for another 30 minutes before he heard her snoring and left.
Husamettin initially denied having raped Gisèle, reportedly saying he received a message on coco.gg reading, “I am indeed his wife, and I agree to welcome you.”
“I am not a rapist,” he told the court, per the AFP. “That’s too much for me to bear. It’s her husband. I never thought that guy could do that to his own wife.” Husamettin only changed his tune after one of the judges reminded him that French law defines the crime as penetration “through violence, constraint, threat or surprise,” but according to the Courthouse News Service, he also called himself a victim.
One man admitted to a “hatred of women.”
In the first week of October, a third round of defendants came before the court. The group of seven men uniformly failed to demonstrate “empathy” for the victim, according to the expert psychiatrist who testified on their character profiles. Per French media, while they may have shared a sense of “guilt” and “concern” as to their consequences for their personal lives, the men tended to blame Dominique for the rapes, rather than themselves. That prompted the psychiatrist to identify a unifying pattern among the accused: “Narcissism, a lack of self-confidence, a lack of empathy,” according to local news. And in the case of one man, Adrien L., an explicit hatred of women, as he explained during his testimony.
Per French media, 34-year-old Adrien L. is the youngest of the accused and figured in Dominique’s rape videos as early as 2014. Depicted in the local report as a sort of golden boy gone astray, he followed his father into the family business, where he “worked like a dog” for his father’s recognition, only to find himself continually “pushed … aside.” When he was 18, Adrien L. discovered a 16-year-old girl he was dating was pregnant. His parents pushed for a paternity test, which revealed that Adrien L. was not the father. Thus was born his self-avowed “hatred of women.”
After that, he testified, he lost all interest in women, but he didn’t stop dating them. He eventually became a parent and reportedly threatened the mother of his son, saying he would hurt their child. And the Pelicot trial marks his second court appearance on charges of sexual abuse this year: He recently received a 14-year sentence for raping and assaulting three of his exes. According to local media, he partially blamed his sexual aggression on abuse he says he suffered as an 8-year-old, when he said he was “touched” by a cousin whom his father prized.
In addition to Adrien L., this group of defendants also included Simone M., a father of five who claims a history of alcohol and sex addiction as well as sexual abuse in his childhood. According to France Bleu, Simone M. was the man Gisèle once saw in her home, ostensibly looking at her husband’s bicycle. Per local media, Simone M. testified that when he came to the Pelicot house, Dominique directed him in what to do but then told him to “hurry up and leave” before he had penetrated Gisèle, allegedly because Dominique hadn’t sedated her heavily enough. Although he admitted to never having gotten Gisèle’s consent, Simone M. insisted that he “wasn’t a rapist” and believed she was “taking part in the game.” Similarly, Redouan E., a nurse, said he wasn’t aware Dominique had drugged his wife, and denied having committed rape: “I didn’t force anyone, I didn’t surprise anyone,” he said, per France Bleu; indeed, he claimed to have been Dominique’s victim. “I was in imminent danger,” he told the court, alleging that he felt too frightened of Dominique to tell him no. “He reduced me to his instrument.”
Two men — Jean T. and Thierry Pa. — purport to have no memory of what happened at the Pelicots’, alleging that Dominique gave them drugged drinks upon their arrival. Dominique denied offering his guests any beverages, but according to local media, Jean T. testified that his last memory inside the Pelicots’ home, post-soda, was of Dominique having sex with Gisèle; the next thing he knew, he said, he was back in his car with no idea what happened in between. (In the video footage, Jean T. can reportedly be seen giving a thumbs-up as he abuses Gisèle.) According to France Bleu, Thierry Pa. similarly claimed to remember nothing about the events of his visit, beyond drinking the whiskey and coke Dominique gave him. Both men deny having committed rape. Another defendant, Thierry Po., was taken into custody in November 2022, for the possession of over 1,000 pornographic photos and videos involving children and animals. Of his involvement in the Pelicot case, local media says he told the court: “Dominique told me do this, do that. It didn’t work. There were moans, she moved — for me, she wasn’t sleeping.”
And then there was Jérôme V., who made six trips to the Pelicots’ home between February and June 2020, while the rest of the country was under COVID lockdown. Though he admitted to the six rapes “in their entirety” and said he was completely aware of the situation, local media reports that he blamed his “weak” character: a sex addiction and an inability to say no to Dominique, he told the court. Jérôme V. further claimed to have been a childhood victim of physical and psychological violence by his parents and classmates, and as a result, to “maybe have more difficulty than the average person in understanding the suffering of others,” he testified. He also said he was “very touched” by Gisèle’s testimony, and “by the little scrap of a woman that she is.”
“I felt even worse for hurting someone so pure,” he added.
Dominique said he sought “a perverted accomplice to rape my sleeping wife.”
In the trial’s sixth week, a group of five men came before the judges. According to France Bleu, two of them — Didier S. and Patrick A. — told the court that they were gay and that Dominique had lured them to his home with promises of a solo encounter. In Patrick A.’s case, Dominique reportedly told him what he was after in the very first Skype exchange: “a perverted accomplice to abuse my sleeping wife.” France Bleu reports that Patrick A. agreed to Dominique’s request “to please him,” and that in doing so, he’d made “a big mistake.” Didier S., meanwhile, told the court that in the moment, he hadn’t seen anything “serious or reprehensible” about the situation. “I believed what monsieur told me,” he testified, adding that he still doesn’t understand why Dominique did what he did. “It’s not me, madame, who should be blamed but your husband,” he addressed himself to Gisèle, per France Bleu.
Once again, the accused largely claimed to have been unaware that Gisèle never gave consent. Karim S., for example: France Bleu reports that, in his early message with Dominique, the latter said he would sedate his wife. Karim S. apparently told investigators that he trusted Dominique, and simply thought the couple were enjoying “a bit of a sick game.” (Incidentally, police also found child pornography on his computer, though he claimed to have downloaded it accidentally, while looking for actual adult content.) Upon reflection, Karim S. now believes that he should have been more “vigilant.”
Some of his co-defendants arguably exercised even less introspection, one — Jean-Marc L. — having told the court that Dominique “impressed” him, and that he was just “obeying orders” when he had sex with Gisèle. Initially, he believed himself the target of a conspiracy in which she was complicit; according to France Bleu, he has since apologized while still maintaining his innocence. Similarly, Vincent C. told the court that he “recognize[s] the acts, but not the facts,” of the rape, per France Bleu. Vincent C. went to the Pelicot house twice, telling Dominique after the first time that he found the setup “bizarre.” But Dominique reportedly replied, “No, we watched the video and she liked it,” which was enough for Vincent C. “That closed the door on any doubts,” he told the court. According to Le Monde, Vincent C. (who has a previous conviction for abusing an ex) told the court he was “looking for a fuck buddy,” and doesn’t “think at times like that.” Per France Bleu, he said he believed the couple were engaged in a game up until the moment he read about the case in the papers. At that point, he said, he “didn’t have the courage to go to the police.” Confronted in court with video of one of the assaults he’d committed, Vincent C. reiterated that Dominique’s explanation had been enough for him. Gisèle reportedly stood up and walked out at that point, exclaiming, “I can’t stand it!”
Several men have claimed to be “victims” of Dominique.
The fifth group of the accused included Mohamed R., a man who in 1999 was convicted of raping his 14-year-old daughter, according to France Bleu. As local media reports, he denied the allegations and unsuccessfully attempted to appeal, claiming he’d been set up by several ex-girlfriends and the children they’d had together. In court, the judges heard Mohamed R.’s “chaotic” life story, from the abuse he allegedly suffered in childhood and repeated on his own kids to the development of a drug addiction. Mohamed R. reportedly visited the second home belonging to the Pelicots’ daughter overnight on May 6, 2019. He claims Dominique told him that Gisèle, unconscious, was drunk, and in court, recalled that having sex with her was “like making love to a corpse.” According to France Bleu, he considers himself “as much a victim” as Gisèle, and believes Dominique orchestrated an “ambush” in cahoots with “a multitude of people who were tricked.” Mohamed R. insisted that he “couldn’t have guessed it was without her knowledge,” because it was Gisèle’s husband who arranged everything and “her husband is supposed to protect her.”
The court also heard from Dominique D., who made six trips to the Pelicots’ home between 2015 and 2020. According to Le Monde, he admitted the full scope of his involvement to police when they arrested him. He came to coco.gg because he was “seeking something new” as his sex life waned with his wife, per Le Monde; he knew, too, that Gisèle had been heavily sedated and that he could not wake her up. But according to Le Monde, he revised that confession during his testimony, admitting “the facts but not the intention.” When he was arrested, he explained, “I was tired. I hadn’t slept in 48 hours, and I didn’t have a lawyer.” In his updated version of events, he claimed that when he first encountered Dominique Pelicot online, Pelicot was “looking for a man to give to his wife on Valentine’s Day,” Le Monde reports. Dominique D. said that he then saw Gisèle via webcam and in person, at her home, though he did not mention her husband’s plan. That was his mistake, Dominique D. reportedly said — that he neglected to get “the lady’s consent.”
Dominique D. also claimed that his knowledge of the situation evolved over time, according to Le Monde. At first, he told the court, he believed Dominique Pelicot had given Gisèle a “tranquilizer” after she’d “drunk a little alcohol.” At that point, he said, “I didn’t suspect anything”; indeed, it wasn’t until his third return that Dominique Pelicot “talked about ‘sleeping pills,’ and no longer about ‘tranquilizers.’” Though he “had [his] doubts” on the fourth visit, he said “it was only the very last time that I learned that it was Temesta, and that I realized that it was serious.” The about-face in Dominique D.’s testimony provoked scrutiny from the judicial panel, and also from the public prosecutor, Laure Chabaud, who asked Dominique D. why he’d told police that “he knew Mrs. Pelicot was drugged without her knowledge” if that wasn’t the case. “‘Without her knowledge,’ does that mean she knew or not?” Chabaud said. When Dominique D. admitted that it meant she didn’t know, Chabaud doubled down: “So you knew from the beginning that this tablet was being given to Mrs. Pelicot without her knowing?” Dominique D. reportedly replied, simply, “Yes.” Asked by Gisèle’s lawyer how he could’ve had this same “accident” six times, Dominique D. pleaded “ease and naïveté,” adding, “It’s unforgivable, what I put her through, and her hearing made me realize.”
Cyril B. reportedly became aggressive under questioning. Courthouse News Service reports that he didn’t think twice about Gisèle’s being unconscious, nor about never seeing her face. The face, he said, isn’t important. “It’s about sex,” he testified. “Sex is sex.” Before the court viewed footage of his assault, Cyril B. was reportedly evasive when asked if Gisèle would have been capable of giving consent under the circumstances. After the tape played — and Cyril B. could be seen raping her as she lay on the bed, snoring and unmoving — he admitted that she couldn’t have agreed or disagreed. Courthouse News reports that in the footage, Cyril B. could also be seen springing away from Gisèle when she suddenly moved, prompting Dominique to fling the couple’s comforter over her head. Though he claimed to have believed that it was all part of the couple’s game, he couldn’t account for his sudden panic in the video. Still, he insisted that it hadn’t been rape.
Another of the accused, Mahdi D., attempted to shift blame to Dominique as well. According to France Bleu, he told investigators that while the basic situation — a woman pretending to be asleep during sex — didn’t bother him, he nonetheless “felt something wasn’t right” when he visited the Pelicot home. But he didn’t doubt Dominique’s story that his wife was simply shy, according to the New York Times. “What with their age and all, it seemed like an agreed-upon scenario,” he reportedly said. “At the time I didn’t ask myself the right questions, but it seemed impossible that there were drugs involved.” In his testimony, he apologized to Gisèle, saying “we cannot imagine what she went through, she was destroyed.” To find himself involved “in the plan that hurt this poor lady,” he said, “it’s terrible for me.” Still, he added, according to France Bleu, if Dominique “hadn’t been there, then a lot of other people wouldn’t have been there, either.”
One of the defendants went so far as to suggest that he wouldn’t have raped Gisèle because she isn’t his physical type. “I am not a rapist,” Ahmed T. testified, according to local media, “but if I had raped someone, it wouldn’t have been a 57-year-old woman, but a beautiful one.” Married for 30 years, Ahmed T. reportedly thought Gisèle was being shy during his visit, or so he claims. He also said that he thought he’d “obtained her consent through her husband,” who’d told her about the plan.
“I didn’t want to waste my time at the police station,” one of the accused said of his decision not to report Dominique.
Over the course of the trial, several men have claimed that when they arrived at the couple’s home, they found the situation “a bit fishy.” That’s how Florian R., a delivery driver who raped Gisèle when he was 27, put it, per France Bleu. And yet none of them, no matter how suspicious they purport to have found it, ever went to the police. Denying his intention to rape Gisèle, Patrice N. echoed the belief that “it was a game.” Though he reportedly said he didn’t remember the particulars of his visit well, he indicated that he didn’t “realize” anything was wrong. “I was an idiot, I was a jerk, whatever you want,” he testified, per local media. “I blame myself every day for that.” But as to why he never reported the encounter, he explained, “I didn’t want to waste my time at the police station. And anyway, who would’ve believed me?”
Abdelali D., who has admitted to raping Gisèle twice, evidently told police he knew what he was doing was “stupid” when he returned to the Pelicot home a second time. The Daily Mail reports that he made two visits, in January and March of 2018, and even had his wife drop him off. “When we arrived, I waited in the car, it was night and I don’t remember how long we were there,” she told the court, per the Mail. “He told me not to park directly outside the house but a little farther away, I didn’t ask him why we were there or what he was doing there, I didn’t want to know.” According to France Bleu, he has said he had a moment of weakness — or, more accurately, two — and a “lack of reflection.”
One of the men is accused of raping Gisèle six times is HIV positive. He never wore a condom.
Romain V., who took the stand in the first week of November, has denied ever raping Gisèle and denied knowing she was drugged. According to France Bleu, his early life was defined by incest and sexual abuse — the latter emerging as a theme among the defendants.
The first time he went to the Pelicots’ home, he said he “felt lonely,” The Guardian reports. “Christmas was approaching and I was going to be on my own again. I was looking for friendship.” Between 2019 and 2020, Romain V. returned six times in as many months. Local media reports that despite his HIV diagnosis, he never wore a condom during his assaults of Gisèle, explaining to the court that due to medication, he is no longer contagious. Of Gisèle’s incapacitation, he explained, “I thought she was half-awake, tired.” But in videos played in court, Romain V. could reportedly be seen kissing Gisèle, open mouthed, while she snored in his face. She snored as he penetrated her, too, and even, on one occasion, as he forced his penis into her mouth.
In spite of all that, he still said “no” when asked if he had raped Gisèle. Though he apologized for what happened, he insisted: “I didn’t intend to rape madame.” As for how he wound up back in the couple’s bedroom so many times, Romain V. reportedly oscillated between blaming his purported “fear” of Dominique, his hunger for “social connection,” and a sort of fugue state in which he acted like a “self-guided zombie.”
“A pervert recognizes a pervert”: One man claims to have been Dominique’s disciple.
Cédric G. admitted to having raped Gisèle: When Dominique told him, in their coco.gg messages, that he had been drugging his wife so that strangers could have sex with her, the 50-year-old said he was “curious,” according to 20 Minutes. “It tickles me.” Over the next few weeks, he said, his desire to rape her grew stronger as Dominique sent him photos and videos — some sexual, some not — of Gisèle, and even covert livestreams from their home. But when he actually showed up, in October 2017, reality did not match expectations. “It’s like a movie trailer,” he reportedly told the court. “It looks fantastic, but [when] you go see the film, it’s not great.” Despite his difficulty getting an erection, and despite his purported lack of interest, he still managed to penetrate Gisèle.
As 20 Minutes reports, Cédric G. and Dominique developed a “master-student relationship,” in which Dominique allegedly encouraged the younger man to replicate his process on another woman: Cédric G.’s then-girlfriend, who used the pseudonym Marion in court. She testified as well, explaining how Cédric G. had previously streamed their sexual encounters without her knowledge, and also doxxed her. She said she found Cédric G.’s messages to Dominique on his cell phone: “I dream she gets raped when she gets home,” he reportedly wrote, adding that he couldn’t get the thought out of his head. Dominique even gave him a dose of the drugs he used on Gisèle, an “exhilarating” gift. “It’s a power, it flatters your ego,” Cédric G. said, per 20 Minutes. “You’re in total transgression.” Despite Marion’s doubts, Cédric G. claimed never to have used the drugs; doing so would’ve been a step “too far,” he said.
Still, Cédric G. purported to have seen himself mirrored in Dominique: Their physical appearances, their voices and modes of speaking, their personal history of alleged childhood abuse, the way their minds worked. “A pervert recognizes a pervert,” he told the court. On Cédric G.’s devices, police also found large stores of homemade pornography, some of which featured exes who said they had no idea they’d been filmed. Unlike Dominique, however, Cédric G. could not find it in himself to apologize to Gisèle. “If I apologized, it’s because I’m not aware of what I did to you,” he testified, per 20 Minutes. “Mrs. Pelicot, I was your rapist, I need it to be said. I was your executioner.”
As testimony nears its end, several more men have admitted to raping Gisèle.
In a surprising twist, given the course of testimony so far, a relatively high proportion of men who addressed the court in early November acknowledged the facts of the case. Paul G., 31, said that Dominique had told him his wife would be sleeping, but not to worry; she’d “already done this with many men” and “wouldn’t notice anything,” per France Bleu. Although he didn’t think too much of it after his 2017 trip to the house, he declined to go back a second time and affirmed the facts of the case in his testimony, as he did at the beginning of the trial.
Cendric V., by contrast, denied the facts of the case back in September but changed his tune on the stand. Cendric V. made two trips to the Pelicot home: One in 2016 and another in 2018. “Both times,” he told the court, “I didn’t see anything wrong.” He said Dominique’s warnings not to wake Gisèle rang no alarm bells, and that he “didn’t question” her state, according to France Bleu. “With alcohol and excitement, we do things without thinking, and I obviously blame myself for that today.” Cendric V. said that while he never set out to rape Gisèle, he “cannot deny the facts.”
Ludovick B. similarly changed his mind, explaining in court that he had come to understand his actions as rape. When the now-39-year-old showed up at the Pelicots’ daughter’s home in December 2019, he said he believed he was having a threesome, and assumed the unconscious Gisèle had given her consent. “I’ve changed,” he said in court, according to France Bleu. “I acknowledge the material facts but I didn’t premeditate what I did.”
Saifeddine G., meanwhile, testified that Dominique hadn’t said anything about Gisèle’s being asleep; if Dominique had warned him, Saifeddine said, as reported by France Bleu, then he wouldn’t have gone and would’ve reported the invitation to police. When Saifeddine arrived and found Gisèle unconscious, however, he neither left nor called the authorities but went ahead with the assault. Saifeddine insists that “there was no penetration with my penis,” according to France Bleu. He was instead guilty of “attempted rape,” he testified. “I risk the same sentence,” he continued, explaining that he was not making the distinction to “clear [his] name, but to tell the truth, so that Mrs. Pelicot knows the truth.”
Multiple defendants claimed they, too, had been drugged by Dominique.
In the final week of defendant testimony, Christian L. addressed the court. A retired fireman captured on Dominique’s camera raping Gisèle while in uniform, he has been present in court most days, purportedly because he sought “to understand” how a crime of this magnitude could have happened. As for the allegations against him, “I’ve spent my life saving people and I couldn’t have done that,” he said. “I’m not a rapist.”
Taking the stand on the last day of testimony, Christian L. presented his working hypothesis: Dominique had drugged him, too. In the videos of his visits, Christian L. claimed to recognize his “body,” but not his “brain.” While he had to admit that “materially, yes, [he had] committed rape,” he insisted he did not mean to. Further, “I have significant doubts about my free will,” he told the court, per France Bleu. “It couldn’t have been me with my values.”
Incidentally, Christian L. was found to have stockpiled some 728 pornographic images on his work computer, some of which appeared to feature children. Investigators also combed through his Skype records and found that in one of his conversations, an as yet unidentified user “offered him [Christian L.] his 9-year-old niece,” France Bleu reports. In another, Christian himself reportedly asked a user identified as “Brian” if his 15-year-old daughter — whom Brian said he’d been feeding sleeping pills — would like “to try 21 cm.” As such, Christian L. also faces child-pornography charges and will stand trial on those starting this month. In his testimony, he denied any wrongdoing and said he had been “hunting down” real pedophiles online.
Nizar H., who also took the stand during the final day of testimony, similarly claimed to have been drugged by Dominique, in spite of videos in which he appeared alert enough to have committed “several particularly shocking sex acts,” as one local report puts it. Nizar H. testified that he believed he was signing up for sex with a couple of swingers and that Dominique told him ahead of time that Gisèle would be feigning sleep. “If this guy drugged his wife, do you think he would’ve been afraid to drug us?” Nizar H. wondered in court. But in contrast to Gisèle, videos of Nizar show him to have been an especially active participant in the encounter. “To me that seems incompatible with a drugged person,” one of the lawyers observed in court, per local media. “And you justify it by saying that you have never performed cunnilingus in your life, it’s extraordinary!”
30-year-old Charly A. first visited the Pelicots’ home in 2016, when he was in his early 20s; he would come back five other times, and claims never to have questioned Gisèle’s state. “I see a woman asleep, pretending to be asleep,” he recalled of his first visit. Because that was what Dominique said would happen, Charly A. continued, he thought it was “normal.”
“Mr. Pelicot told me she had given her consent and there weren’t any problems,” he testified, per local media. He refutes the facts of the case, even though he volunteered his own mother to be Dominique’s next victim — a conversation Dominique captured on-camera. When Dominique asked Charly A. if he knew anyone on whom they could replicate the scheme, Charly A. testified that “the first thing that came to mind was my mother.” Dominique gave him several pills, which Charly A. said he threw away and Dominique said he returned; what actually happened isn’t especially clear, given that traces of the drug were subsequently found in the mother’s hair sample. Nonetheless, Charly A. insists he never administered the drugs and claimed in court that he realized “there wasn’t consent” after thinking about replicating the scheme on a family member, France Bleu reports.
Dominique Pelicot has insisted he made each of the men “perfectly aware of all the conditions.”
Back on the stand in mid-October, Dominique was called upon to clarify several points that had arisen over the course of the trial. One key question, according to Le Monde, was how he’d managed to drug his wife in secret for so long when, as one judge pointed out, the couple didn’t live in “a 50-room château.” Dominique then elaborated on his process in more detail: He measured and crushed the Temesta in advance, and then he’d mix it into her morning coffee or an after-dinner ice cream. Because he was the one who did the cooking, Dominique said, it was all “relatively easy” to pull off. Once he’d given her the medication, he had to wait about two hours for her to fall into a deep sleep, and from there, he could arrange her body, dressing her in accordance with each visitor’s “desires.”
The drug’s effects typically lasted for around five hours, usually giving him “time to put everything back in place” once the men left. According to Le Monde, he would clean his wife up before putting her back in whatever clothes she’d been wearing, while he laundered the garments he used for the rapes, which he stored in a bag in the garage. When asked how he managed to “cope the next day, to live normally with this woman whom [he] claimed to love more than anything, and whom [he] offered and prepared,” Dominique replied that “the days after were painful,” without elaborating. But when asked if he had been “consistent, exhaustive, and precise in the instructions” he’d given the accused, and if he had been explicit about his plans to sedate Gisèle, Dominique said that he had been and that his ground rules “left no doubt.”
“All the people who came to my house were perfectly aware of all the conditions,” he said, as reported by Le Monde.
What has Gisèle said about the trial?
Throughout the proceedings, Gisèle has largely sat calmly in the courtroom, listening to the men defend their actions and watching them assault her on tape. But in the trial’s earliest weeks, she gave testimony of her own. “I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” she said in the beginning. The accused, she continued, “regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.”
Her husband’s account, she added, was “difficult … to hear.”
“For 50 years, I lived with a man whom I wouldn’t have imagined for a single second could do these things. I had total confidence in this man.” Because of these “acts of barbarity,” she has said, “I no longer have an identity … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself.”
This post has been updated.