Gisèle Pélicot, as during the rest of the judicial days, appeared this Thursday with her face uncovered in the courtroom and was preparing to testify in front of 51 men who raped her for a decade. Including her husband, Dominique Pélicot. Her testimony lasted more than two hours and, during this time, her husband, to whom she was married for 50 years and who drugged her so that other men could mistreat her, barely raised his eyes from the ground. It was the first time they had met since the man had been arrested by the police, after finding on his computer more than 2,000 photos and videos showing his wife being sexually assaulted for the men who were in the dock this Thursday. Gisèle Pélicot made her testimony public: “I do it on behalf of all these women who may never be recognized as victims.”
More than half of the accused, 35 years old, admitted to having had sexual relations with Gisèle Pélicot (72 years old), but denied the intention to rape her, claiming to have been deceived by Dominique Pélicot (71 years old). He, for his part, admitted to the facts with which he is accused: the chemical submission of his wife before handing her over to strangers contacted by the internet in his own house in Mazan, a town south of France.
In three days of hearing, Gisèle Pélicot did not collapse. Neither in the detailed account of the investigators on the 92 rapes he suffered, nor in her own statement this Thursday. Her speech was firm and the account structured and precise. But this approach to justice was not done only for her, she did it for other women who are also victims. “I held firm during this trial, for me the damage is done,” he declared. She believes that she will be heard and that the process will benefit from the greatest possible publicity “so that no woman suffers this chemical submission.”
Gisèle Pélicot began speaking by describing how she discovered the rapes. “I would first like to describe the events that, for me, began on September 19 [2020]”, he said. That day, her husband told her she had done something “stupid.” He had been caught filming the skirts of three women in a supermarket. A month and a half later, both were summoned to the Carpentras police station.
After recalling this call, Gisèle Pélicot returned to what she had believed until then to be her marital relationship and declared that there had only been two men in her life, the accused and another couple: “For 50 years, I have always supported my friend. In 50 years we have not had a linear life, but we have always remained united. I thought that [la cita policial] “It was a formality.” However, the way the meeting with the officers unfolded was very different. The officer in charge warned her: “I'm going to show you things that you're not going to like”; and she replied: “I'm scared, I have no idea what he's going to show me,” she said at the trial.
The police officer showed her a photo, but at first she didn't recognize the woman in bed. It was her. “He said to me: 'Madame. Pélicot, look carefully. I have trouble recognizing myself, I'm dressed in a certain way. On the third photo, I said to him: 'let's stop, these are rape scenes, I'm inert, I'm sleeping and they're raping me,'” he said in front of the accused, who listened attentively, some with their eyes fixed on the ground. ground.
“Rape is the wrong word, it’s barbarity,” he said. After discovering the atrocities her husband was doing to her, all she wanted to do was disappear. “I’m going to take my car and my dog, and I’ll be done with this,” he thought. After leaving the police station, he called his son-in-law to tell him. Then his daughter. That night, she and her three children held hands and cried in the living room of her home, she said at trial.
Gisèle Pélicot has seen all the videos of the rapes she suffered. “These are not sex scenes, these are rape scenes. There are two, three of them on me. “I am inert,” he said. “I was sacrificed on the altar of vice. When you see this woman drugged, mistreated, like a dead woman. Of course, the body is not cold, it is hot, but I am as if dead,” she said.
Gisèle Pélicot's testimony lasted two hours. Towards the end, the septuagenarian let her guard down a little and her voice became a little less firm, while the audience, lawyers and journalists praised her dignity. “Inside, I am a field of ruins. The facade is solid, but behind …,” he said.