French rape trial: You left me a heap of ruins, gang raped wife tells alleged abusers

Dominique Pelicot is accused of intoxicating his wife and then inviting dozens of men to assault her for almost a decade. He is on trial in France.

A defiant grandmother told a courtroom full of her abusers she “had it all” before her happy middle-class marriage was reduced to “ruins” when she learned she was the unwitting victim of France’s largest rape case.

All week, Gisele Pelicot, 72, remained stoically silent as the criminal court in Avignon, southern France, heard harrowing details of how her husband had enlisted more than 70 men online to rape her in their quiet Provence home over 10 years after he drugged her unconscious.

Dominique Pelicot, 71, kept 20,000 photos and films of his wife being raped 200 times under deep sedation, sometimes over six-hour periods. The nightmarish reality was only revealed by chance after he was arrested for secretly filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020.

In a long orange dress, white jacket and auburn bob, Gisele Pelicot left her three adult children’s side to take to the stand, calmly giving her maiden name and age.

When the judge said he would do his best not to ask her “disturbing” questions, she replied: “Given what I have been through, nothing disturbs me.” She then told the court she would try not to talk for too long to not “send the room to sleep”.

‘Feelings of disgust’

A large part of that room was made up of the 51 defendants, including her husband, on trial for aggravated rape and who face up to 20 years in jail. She chose to waive her right to anonymity to raise awareness of date rape drugs and so that “shame changes sides”.

One of five professional magistrates asked Pelicot what she felt about her husband pleading guilty.

She replied: “Feelings of disgust. We had everything, we had a great life. I don’t understand how this could have happened.

“We had it all, everything we needed to be happy,” she told the court.

Strikingly self-controlled and dignified during her hour-long testimony, she likened herself to a “boxer who has hit the floor but keeps standing up”. Her loving upbringing by a military father after her mother died of cancer when she was 9 taught her resilience.

“I am trying to keep on my feet for my children.”

But she warned her Mother Courage exterior hid inner torment. “When people see me, they say: ‘She’s a strong woman’. The facade looks solid, but inside, it’s a pile of ruins. Everything needs to be rebuilt.”

‘Take responsibility for your acts’

She repeatedly insisted that she knew nothing of her husband’s warped sexual fantasies that he played out at their home in the Provence village of Mazan.

Dominique Pelicot and 14 of his co-accused have admitted to rape. But 35 men – from all walks of life – deny that they forced themselves on Pelicot while she was unconscious, claiming that she in some way consented to libertine sex.

One of Gisele’s lawyers asked her in court: “Some of the defendants admit the facts, others contest all the facts, and others confirm they were present but deny it was rape.

“You caught four sexually transmitted diseases and were exposed to HIV six times. What have you got to say to people who claim you consented to all this?”

She replied: “All I have to say is, it’s an insult to my intelligence. These individuals were totally aware of what state I was in. I never knowingly took part in any of these things.

“To those who deny this was rape, I say to them for once in your life, take responsibility for your acts.”

‘Scenes of horror’

She described the moment in November 2020 when investigators first showed her the images of a decade of sexual abuse orchestrated and filmed by her husband, calling it “an explosion, a tsunami”.

“My world is falling apart. For me, everything is falling apart. Everything I have built up over 50 years,” she said.

“Frankly, these are scenes of horror for me,” she said of the pictures, while her husband listened with his head bowed.

“I’m lying motionless on the bed, being raped,” she said of the “barbaric” footage.

“They treat me like a rag doll, a rubbish bag,” she told the judges, adding that she had only plucked up the courage to watch the footage in May 2024.

“Don’t talk to me about sex scenes. These are rape scenes,” she said, saying it took her some time to accept the “dead” woman on the bed was herself.

When she told her children, “my daughter screamed like a wild beast. I will never forget it”.

Pelicot paid tribute to the policeman who initially arrested her husband and searched his phone and computer. “He no doubt saved my life,” she said, recalling her waning health and unexplained “blackouts” as a result of the amount of drugs her husband was secretly putting in her drinks and food.

She told the court she became “convinced” she had developed Alzheimer’s.

“I didn’t understand why I had moments like this, I have an excellent memory,” said Pelicot, adding that when she jokingly asked her husband, if he was drugging her, he “broke down in tears” and said: ‘You actually think I could do that?’”

She only linked the blackouts to drugs once her husband’s sex tapes were revealed.

She referred to him coldly as Monsieur Pelicot in the trial, saying that she had kept the surname herself out of “solidarity” with her children but would drop it for good once the four-month proceedings were over and her divorce had been finalised.

“Then the page will be turned for good,” she said.

Asked what she wanted from the trial, she said: “I want it to be exemplary.

“I’m speaking for all those women who are being drugged and don’t know it, I’m doing it on behalf of all those women who may never know it (...) so that no woman will ever have to suffer drug-facilitated rape again.”