***WARNING CONTAINS GRAPHIC, DISTRESSING, POTENTIALLY TRAUMATISING DETAILS***
Man allegedly drugged wife's dinner then invited more than 50 other men over to rape her
Ms. Gisèle Pélicot asked that her trial be made public so every single piece of shit that raped her will have their name & face shown.
Gisèle Pélicot, a 72-year-old French woman, waived her legal right to anonymity on Monday at the opening of the trial of Dominique Pélicot, 71, and 51 other men.
All are accused of aggravated rape in a trial at the Vaucluse Criminal Court, in Avignon, which is due to last for four months. Twenty of them, including Pélicot, are in custody, while the others remain on bail.
Asked to confirm his name and address at the start of proceedings, Pélicot said: "My home is prison, you know it". Ms Pélicot, a mother-of-three, was supported by her adult children as she stood in the public gallery, listening to evidence.
The family home, in nearby Mazan, allegedly became a crime scene over almost a decade, when streams of men were invited to attack Ms Pélicot. Her husband is said to have used an online platform called coco.fr to contact them between 2011 and 2020.
Detectives have listed a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified.They are all being tried alongside Mr Pélicot , a former employee at French utility company, EDF
The Pélicots shared a large family house and – outwardly – were highly respectable pensioners with family members who visited regularly. Neighbours spoke about them as ‘lovely people’ who held parties around their swimming pool, in a well-kept garden, according to court evidence.
In fact, Pélicot was allegedly a serial rapist who moved his family from greater Paris in 1991, and later allegedly set up the sex ring. It involved advertising on a site for ‘partners’ on an online forum called ‘Without Her Knowing’.
Participants would discuss performing acts on unwitting partners, and then film their depravity, before storing the videos on a USB drive dubbed ‘Abuses’. In Pélicot’s case, the data eventually fell into the hand of police, who confirmed it enabled them to identify the 92 cases of rape. Of the 83 men involved, 51 aged between 26 and 73 were identified and arrested by the police.
Pélicot is said to have sedated his wife by putting tablets of a powerful anxiolytic drug into her evening dinner. He then invited strangers from the online forum into the couple's bedroom, so that his wife could be raped while unconscious. All were told to wash their hands, and not to wear aftershave, so she would not sense they were strangers.
Investigators only learned about the horror in 2020, when Pélicot was arrested in a supermarket in Carpentras for filming up the skirts of other customers.
When police searched his camera phone, and equipment kept at his home, they found all of the abuse images. Alleged rapists involved in the case include civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers.
A fireman accused of raping Ms Pélicot wore his uniform during the attack, one video shows. The fireman's computer contained 728 images of children being sexually abused, say prosecutors.
Some of his accomplices claimed they had no idea the sex was not consensual while one denied it was rape, saying: "It's his wife, he does what he likes with her." The trial continues, and is due to last until December 21.
