The trial that began on Monday continued this Friday, September 6, with the emotional testimonies of the daughter of the main accused followed by those of his daughters-in-law. The three witnesses recounted the shock of discovering the crimes of Dominique Pélicot, accused of drugging his wife Gisèle Pélicot for 10 years and recruiting men on the internet to rape her, as well as taking photographs of his daughter and in-laws, naked without their knowledge before spreading the photos on the Internet.
At the helm, they told, one by one, how their lives changed on that day in November 2020, the day they discovered the crimes of Dominique Pélicot. After the fiery testimony of Gisèle Pélicotraped for ten years by dozens of strangers recruited on the Internet by her husband, it was the turn of her daughter and two daughters-in-law on Friday, September 6.
Beyond the main victim, an entire family was broken, the defendant's daughter testified, accusing her “progenitor” of being “one of the biggest sex offenders of the last 20 years.” “How do we rebuild when we know that?” pleaded Caroline Darian, 45, the daughter of Dominique Pélicot, who now appears publicly under the pseudonym with which she published a book (And I stopped calling you dad), to protect their couple and child.
Hearing at the Vaucluse criminal court, where her father and 50 other men, aged between 26 and 74, have been on trial since Monday for four months, she recalled the day she discovered everything. “This November 2, 2020, at 8:35 p.m., my life literally turned upside down,” she explained, recounting the moment when her mother, after learning from the police in Carpentras (Vaucluse), called will inform him. . “My mother said, 'I spent a good part of the day at the police station, your father was drugging me to rape me with strangers,'” she says. “I'm calling my brothers, we're helpless, we're crying, we don't understand.”
The next day, the three children woke up in Carpentras, in front of the police. “I will always see David, white, stoic, and my little brother Florian collapsing,” she describes, of the moment a policeman estimates “between 30 and 50” of her mother's attackers. At the end of the investigation, 72 men were eventually identified as having abused Ms Pelicot between July 2011 and October 2020, of whom only 50 have been identified and are on trial in Avignon.
“Pictures of me pregnant, naked”
On the same November 3, 2020, the police showed him two photos of a naked woman, apparently sleeping: “We see her buttocks in the foreground, this woman is sleeping in the fetal position, I don't recognize her,” explains Caroline. Darian. “But madam, it's you who has a spot on your right cheek,” the investigator points out. “I discovered that my father had photographed me, unbeknownst to me, naked. Why, wonders his daughter, now convinced that “Mr. Pélicot,” whom she also calls “my father,” drugged her too, as he had done with? his mother whom he bombarded with anxiolytics. Photos that his father had also posted on the Internet.
And Caroline is not the only one, along with her mother, who was the victim of Dominique Pelicot, 71, who remained all morning curled up in a corner of the defendants' box. Céline, 48, wife of David Pélicot, and Aurore P., 37, ex-wife of Florian Pelicot, were also photographed, naked, always without their knowledge, by their father-in-law. They who felt they had joined the 'ideal' family, 'demonstrative' and 'loving', with a 'helpful' father-in-law despite his few tantrums.
There were “pictures of me pregnant with our twins, naked, […] I have enlarged my private parts,” dating back to 2011, Céline explained in court. Others from 2019. Or this upper-body photomontage of her having sex with two men. These images were also circulated on the Internet. “But who and where are they now, in 5 years, in 10 years, asks the mother, according to which “all the grandchildren of the family (editor's note: six in total) have lost their innocence.”
“They tried to shake her, she didn't react”
Céline Pelicot remembers the day her children found their grandmother unconscious at around 11am: “They tried to shake her, she didn't react, she came out around 5pm.” The night before, “our children could have heard things, so they were present,” while their grandmother was undoubtedly being raped, she deduces.
For Aurore, herself a victim of childhood abuse, this adventure also took its toll. Investigators show him photos of her naked in a bathroom or at the pool. Among them, “a photo of my stepdad's penis on my bathing suit, a montage of 'My Whore Stepdaughter'” as the caption. “The feeling I had was so much anger when I see the disrespect that a human being can be treated with, I had so much anger,” she says.
“I have three children, two girls and a boy, I'm afraid to see them develop into a world where this is possible,” explained the thirty-year-old, referring to the possibility that they change the name: “My children bear this name Pélicot, we should not be ashamed of anything, but maybe we will think about it or they will.
The trial will resume on Monday at 9 am with the hearing of experts and psychiatrists who examined Dominique Pelicot. He himself is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday afternoon