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someone-will-remember-us · 2 months ago

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There is no collective noun for rapists but spend a week at the Pelicot trial and you wonder why. As the early morning queue of women who’ve come to support Gisèle Pelicot passes through security at the Palais de Justice, Avignon, you spy men with downturned faces scurrying across the lobby past the press. In court they sit on the left, clustered around a glass box containing more men, those in custody for the gravest crimes. Since there are 50 in total, the alleged rapists have been tried in batches and I’m just here for the final seven: Boris, Philippe, Nicolas, Nizair, Joseph, Christian, Charly.

Plus Dominique Pelicot himself, who invited them all into his marital bedroom, where he had his wife waiting, drugged and naked, and who joined in and filmed it all. Pelicot, 71, crumpled and fat now, but with a residual bulky power, sits sullenly alone with his guard in a separate glass box, protected from the other men who blame and detest him. Often after lunch he appears to doze off.

Such nondescript men. Grizzled, middle-aged (the mean is 47 years old), smart-casual in windcheaters or leather jackets and their best trainers, like minicab drivers waiting for fares. Ordinary men in many respects, not vagrants, junkies or career criminals. This week’s seven includes a fireman, an electrician and a journalist; several are fathers, two were keen weightlifters, one bred dogs. French trials helpfully begin with a personality profile formed from interviews with the men, their friends and colleagues. Poverty, domestic violence and mental breakdowns feature, but also that a man is “kind” or “gentle”, had a lovely childhood, adored his grandparents or is devoted to his mum.

Yet each one had sex with an unconscious woman, that is beyond doubt, thanks to Pelicot’s camera mounted on a tripod beside the bed, and by his own admission. “I am a rapist,” he has declared, “like the others in this room.”

From the Pelicot affair have come demands for reform to French rape law, for sexual violence to be treated more seriously, for an investigation into “chemical submission” — the coercive use of sedatives. But one question overshadows all others. How many men would have done the same? If Pelicot could recruit at least 70 willing participants (a number could not be identified) within a 25-mile radius of Mazan, the Provençal town where the couple retired, how many in the whole of France? As I walk through Avignon with Juliette Campion of radio station France Info, who bears the strain of reporting this case since September, she gestures to a bureau de tabac: “You think, ‘Would a guy in there have raped Gisèle? Or men in the boulangerie or those on the street?’ Women are looking at men differently: they’re asking, ‘Could you or you or you?’ ”

On the right of the court, behind her counsel of three serious, dark-haired young men, is Gisèle Pelicot with her female companion from victim support, leaning on the wall, as far from the men as the room allows, but facing her ex-husband. Her composure is remarkable. Although clearly tired and strained, she retains a quiet vivacity reflected in her clothes. Instead of shrinking away in black, she dresses each day as if meeting friends for drinks on a sunny terrace. A chic scarf, a faux fur bag, patent leather boots. Clothes that say, “I still have a life.” Every evening, when women line up to clap her out of court, she speaks to them warmly, neither reticent nor relishing the attention. Every day she walks through the cobbled streets past graffiti saying, “Gisèle, les femmes te remercient” (Gisèle, women thank you) to lunch at the same excellent brasserie, and people turn to gaze at her in awe.

The extraordinary woman who refused to be silenced

The humiliations of Gisèle Pelicot have a mythic quality. This is a woman who discovered the man she married aged 20, with whom she had three children and seven grandchildren, waited until she was deeply asleep before removing her pyjamas, dressing her in “sexy” underwear or writing on her buttocks, “I am a good submissive bitch,” then he let a stranger penetrate her inert body, filmed it, washed her intimately and replaced her pyjamas. This is a woman who thought she was going insane, had Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour, whose children thought she was dying, who stopped driving and going out alone, who slept all day and once woke puzzled why her hair was shorter. “But madame,” said her hairdresser, “you came in yesterday.” This is a woman who had mysterious gynaecological problems, including a swollen cervix (and still lives with four STDs), who thought her husband wonderful for accompanying her to medical tests, including an MRI.

This is a woman who, when her husband was arrested for “upskirting” in a Leclerc supermarket and police found the contents of his phone, discovered her whole 50-year marriage was a travesty, that he’d raped her in a service station car park, on Valentine’s Day and on her 66th birthday, and may have raped their daughter too. This is a woman who has listened to legal arguments about whether a man put his tongue inside or merely kissed her vagina, who heard another man say he’d only returned to rape her a second time because he couldn’t find anyone better, who sits in a courtroom while three giant TV screens show clips of her body being coldly humped by yet another “ordinary” guy.

Yet this is a woman who gathered up every scrap of her humiliation and with it constructed a mirror that she holds up defiantly to the court and to French society itself. “Shame must change sides,” she said, and in insisting the entire trial be conducted openly, that the worst men can do to women is witnessed by the whole world, she has done exactly that.

I ask many women I meet in Avignon how men in their lives regard the accused. They say they call them losers and freaks, that these are men on the margins, with no relation to themselves. But, along with the testimony I hear, the people I talk to believe this case raises many questions about French sexual mores. Whatever the decision later this month by five judges — there is no jury — Gisèle Pelicot will never be forgotten.

The court turns to Christian L, a fireman with a straggly castaway beard, who speaks from the glass box because after he was arrested, police found 4,000 child sex abuse and zoophilic images on his hard drive. We hear from his girlfriend, Sylvie, a small blonde in a grey hoodie, who says he’s a wonderful man, and is suspected of destroying evidence. Christian L recalls the victims he watched die in fires, the coffins of 11 colleagues he carried, the mental breakdowns that ensued. He was married but after his two daughters were born says he went off sex with his wife and turned to libertinisme. Strange, I think, that the French have coined this noble, philosophical concept, with its whiff of the barricades, to describe what we call swinging or dogging.

Like all the men, Christian met Pelicot through coco.fr — the murky, unmoderated site since closed down and now the focus of many major police investigations — on a forum called À son insu (without her knowledge). Christian L had already enjoyed “Sleeping Beauty” encounters with ten other couples. He spells out the rules: that you only dealt with the husband, sending him photos for approval, and during the sexual encounter he ran the show. Sometimes the wife woke up, other times not. How did he know, asked Gisèle’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, that she consented?

“In a libertine encounter,” Christian L explained, “it is the husband’s responsibility to ensure consent.”

But how could you be sure?

“Are we expected to sign a contract?” Christian L spluttered.

“You could ask the woman,” Babonneau suggested.

How the case could change French law

Given the overwhelming video evidence, the defendants can only claim Pelicot deceived or drugged them, or they believed Gisèle was collaborating in a game. If this case were before a British court, rape would be decided by two tests: whether Gisèle had “capacity to consent” (tough to argue given Pelicot admits to drugging her) and whether the men had “reasonable belief” in her consent. Unlike most European countries, French rape law has no concept of consent. Rather, it is defined as penetration “by violence, constraint, threat or surprise”. (The prosecution case rests on a convoluted definition of surprise.)

But rather than demand consent be added to the law, French feminists are divided. Some agree with President Macron, who supports change; many others argue that consent would put the onus on the victim to prove her conduct was not an invitation. This seems an odd objection, especially as the whole purpose of the video evidence is to show no one could believe Gisèle capable of consent, given she was so lifeless one man asked Pelicot, “Is your wife dead?”

Alice Géraud is the author of Sambre, an investigation into how, due to the indifference and cruelty of police, a caretaker called Dino Scala in northern France managed to rape 54 women over a period of 30 years. “The Pelicot case with 50 defendants and one victim feels a strange inverse of Sambre.”

Géraud believes the Pelicot affair could provide the same impetus for change as a famous 1974 case of two Belgian tourists, Anne-Marie Tonglet and Aracelli Castellano, who, camping near Marseilles, were brutally raped by three local men. As was normal practice, the crime was downgraded from felony to misdemeanour on the basis the victims eventually stopped resisting. But the women, a lesbian couple, persisted and thanks to their feminist lawyer, Gisèle Halimi, it became the first rape case to be heard in the higher assizes court. Like Gisèle Pelicot, the women waived their anonymity. “We believe that it’s one thing for a man to rape,” said Halimi, “and another to know it’ll get around his village, his work, the papers.” Shame changed sides: the men were jailed and the French criminal code was rewritten defining rape as a serious offence.

For Géraud, the greatest current injustice is that whether a man has raped one women or 50, the maximum sentence is 20 years (here a serial rapist can be jailed for life). “This is law made by men,” she says, “with a grave lack of knowledge of rape culture.” She is scornful too about libertinisme as a universal excuse for male sexual exploitation. “Libertinisme was why Coco existed for so long,” she says. “It is the justification for prostitution, for the porn industry.”

Charly A is the youngest of all the defendants, just 22 when he first entered the Pelicot house. Small, bearded, now 30, we learn his childhood was chaotic, his father an alcoholic, his mother had many sexual partners; there are hints of abuse. “This is a family of secrets,” concludes the personality profiler. A psychiatrist adds he is immature, struggles to sustain relationships and instead consumes porn, “especially the Milf [Mother I’d like to f***] category with mature women”. In 2016, he made contact with Pelicot via Coco: “He said his wife would be lying there pretending to be asleep, he doesn’t tell me more.”

Over time Pelicot asks Charly if he knows anyone they could drug for sex and he proffers the only woman in his life — his own mother. Pelicot gives him pills (which Charly claims to have thrown away), shows him how to crush them, keeps pressing him to use them. “When can I come and we f*** your mother?” he asks in one video, but Charly keeps stalling, saying his brother is at home. Yet he returns to violate Gisèle, always with Pelicot, once with another man, a total of six times. “Did you feel like you were in a porn film?” asks Babonneau. Charly shakes his head.

Until this point, very late in the trial, the influence of internet pornography has barely been explored. The court only notes paedophiliac images, not “normal” usage. Yet Mathieu Lacambre, a psychiatrist who evaluates Charly A, remarks how porn sites not only push users to more extreme content but to enact porn fantasies in real life. “Until now Charly A was behind the screens,” he says. “Now [in Gisèle] he has an object served up on a platter a few miles from home. The sleeping princess Milf, voilà.”

A rented home in a quiet cul-de-sac

I drive out to Mazan, a lovely honey-stoned French village set in the vineyards below Mont Ventoux, where the Pelicots retired from Villiers-sur-Marne, a Paris commuter town where he was electrician and she was a manager at EDF. I imagine Gisèle browsing the little boutique, dropping into the beauty salon, sipping an aperitif outside the bistro. The home they rented for ten years is five minutes away in a quiet cul-de-sac of four houses behind tall cypress trees. It is lemon yellow with blue shutters, a pool, a very prominent alarm system, and new tenants. Given how many men knew her address, Gisèle fled four years ago for her own safety, with just a suitcase and her dog.

Today an immense cloud of migrating starlings swoops over the house like pixels in a photograph. This was where their grandchildren loved to visit in the summer, but also the centre of Dominique Pelicot’s porn operation. For what else was this grotesque man but a pornographic auteur?

We leave our car, just as Pelicot instructed the men, in the sports ground car park, by the bottle bank. I think of them texting their arrival, then creeping down the lane. (One man made his girlfriend wait in the car.) Pelicot would meet them at the door by the light of his phone, tell them to undress in the dark living room and warm their hands on a radiator. (They’d been instructed to be clean, not smell of cigarettes or wear cologne.) Then they were led into a bedroom with a TV, a chest of drawers, a bed with a naked Gisèle motionless on white sheets, and a mounted camera.

Whatever followed next was carefully orchestrated by Pelicot, a director urging on actors in stage whispers, since the objective was to do what they desired without waking Gisèle. Pelicot would tell them how and when to penetrate her, or hold his wife’s gaping mouth to facilitate oral sex. Given four Temesta (lorazepam), a powerful anti-anxiety drug he’d crushed into her wine or ice cream, his wife was like a patient on an operating table. Even so, if her arm gave an involuntary spasm,the men would scuttle from the room. A friend who has sat through many court videos says it was Pelicot ordering the humping men to go doucement — softly — that upset her, since she knew this was not out of tenderness for Gisèle.

All the while the camera rolled. Why did these men agree to have their crimes recorded? They say it was part of the deal, that Pelicot told them Gisèle was shy and liked to watch the sex later. But perhaps also because, in taking part, these men were promoted from porn consumers to creators. Filming was central to their fantasy. When Christian L finally climaxes he turns to give the camera a cheery thumbs-up.

For Pelicot, each film added to his oeuvre. Police discovered a carefully curated archive of 20,000 images and videos on hard drives and memory sticks showing 200 rapes. He gave each film a title like “Squirt on the ass”, “Cock in mouth” or “Jacques fingering”. This man, once caught by his daughter-in-law masturbating at his computer, was now a porn impresario.

The question at the centre of the case

Why did Pelicot do all this to a wife he professed to love, whom he called “a saint”? Was it to punish Gisèle for an affair early in their marriage (although he was serially unfaithful himself)? Or because when he’d asked her to join him in the libertinisme scene she’d refused — so he devised a way to make her. But Gisèle was not his first victim: Pelicot has admitted to the rape of an estate agent, using ether to drug her, in 1999, and will be tried for the rape/murder of another young estate agent, Sophie Narme, in 1991. The French police cold case bureau is investigating his possible links to many other unsolved crimes.

But as the “Without her knowledge” forum suggests, his was not a unique fantasy. The Pelicot case has illuminated the issue of “chemical submission”, not only drinks being spiked by strangers in bars, but drugs used to control partners within relationships. The French health service is noted for being blasé about prescribing heavy-duty medications, which is how Pelicot stockpiled his vast stash of Temesta.

Documentary-maker Linda Bendali has made a film for French TV about chemical submission, featuring seven cases, including a 13-year-old girl drugged by her father with medicine supposedly for her allergies, put in lingerie and raped over two years, and a 60-year-old woman drugged then raped at home by a man she was mentoring at work. “I’ve looked back at 30 years of press reports of rape,” says Bendali, “which includes dozens of women saying they woke up — mainly with men they know— unable to remember what happened.”

The Sleeping Beauty scenario, she says, is not merely a means for a man to get easy sexual access, but a way to enjoy absolute domination. “You are not even giving her the chance to consent,” says Bendali. “You can do anything you want to a drugged woman, for as long as you want. You can dress her how you want. These men want total power.” Pelicot is typical in filming his crimes: “Pictures are trophies. He was driven by a mix of desires for blackmail and voyeurism.”

Gisèle’s daughter, Caroline Darian, who was also drugged and photographed naked by her father, is heading a campaign on chemical submission, demanding police take samples of hair from rape victims, the only way sedation can be proved.

In court, I hear another psychiatrist tasked with assessing whether each of the final seven defendants has the profile of a sexual abuser. One by one, he exonerates the men, saying they are not dangerous or likely to reoffend, to the growing exasperation of Gisèle’s team. Then he reaches Charly A. “He doesn’t search [for victims] systematically,” says the psychiatrist. “He’s not a predator.” Finally, Babonneau explodes: “Six times with a sleeping woman and he’s not a sexual abuser?” The men do not identify as rapists because, like this psychiatrist, they define rape as frenzied sexual violence, not an opportunistic act performed to whispers in a private home. As one defendant put it, “It’s her husband, his house, his room, his bed, his wife.”

Women unite in the town of Mazan

Both in religious and political terms, Mazan is a conservative town: for 500 years it was part of a papal enclave and in the recent French election voted heavily for Marine Le Pen. Villagers regarded the Pelicot case with horror and sympathy which turned quickly to resentment when press named it l’affaire Mazan. Amid longstanding families who’ve known each other for generations, the Pelicots were outsiders who’d brought disgrace into a rural community. Tired of inquiries, the mayor, Louis Bonnet, 74, told the BBC, “It could have been far more serious. There were no kids involved. No women were killed.”

At the Lucky Horse Ranch outside Mazan, women victims of sexual violence receive equine therapy. I’m sceptical at first about how grooming and riding horses could help rape victims, but somehow these large, placid animals are calming and restorative. Here I meet Latika, 33, who at first was too timid to touch a Shetland pony, but now sits high on a saddle for our photograph.

Latika was separating from her husband, the father of her two children, but still sharing a house. He was violent, hitting her daughters, putting her in hospital with cuts and a broken rib. Two years after they’d last had sex, she woke to find him inside her. She believes the sweet tea he often gave her was laced with sedatives, but that night she hadn’t drunk it all. She realised he’d been drugging her for years — her mother recalls finding her deeply unconscious early in her relationship — and, worse, she was pregnant with a third child. She told the police, who addressed the domestic violence but ignored the rape. Her husband fled to Guadeloupe and she was left traumatised, fearful of leaving the house.

“I didn’t feel people really believed what had happened to me until Gisèle Pelicot spoke out,” says Latika, who has since made the police reopen her case. In October, as women across France holding white flowers protested in support of Gisèle, Latika headed the local march into Mazan and the next day Gisèle herself visited the ranch. “She said it is almost unbearable to return to this place where terrible things happened,” says Latika, “but she wanted to thank us. She told me, ‘I didn’t know the meaning of my life before this happened — but I do now.’ ”

Watching Gisèle take such sustenance from her supporters, you wonder how she will cope when the trial finally ends. She is writing a book and could, if she chose, become a global campaigner. “There is something particularly powerful,” says Linda Bendali, “about her being an older woman — she represents all our mothers. All generations identify with her.” But those close to Gisèle say that, at 72, she may just return to a quiet life of friends, grandchildren and her garden, in the secret location where she now lives.

But she is already an icon of courage for the women who come from across France and beyond just to watch the trial on a screen in an overspill room. Some want to witness history, a few enjoy the sensational evidence like tricoteuses at the guillotine, but many have risen at 5am, taking a day off work, to support a woman they deeply admire. Marion Spiteri and Amélie Planche, both 24 and law graduates, feel the case opened their eyes. “How can it be,” Spiteri says, “that so many men did this without her consent?” “It is terrifying,” Planche adds, “that a woman cannot even trust her own husband.” They tell me, astonishingly, that neither they nor their friends ever go to the toilet in a bar or club alone.

But then the nation of libertinisme lags behind in its attitude to violence against women. Until 2021, France did not even have an age of consent, effectively decriminalising even incestuous relations between children and adults, allowing several high-profile child abusers, including firemen who groomed a 13-year-old girl, to evade rape charges. Each time a prominent Frenchman is accused of rape — whether politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn or, currently, actor Gerard Dépardieu — famous French actresses leap to defend him. This is the nation that convicted child rapist Roman Polanski fled to from America, and is still fêted. The #MeToo movement was regarded by many as a wave of Anglosphere prudishness, contrary to the spirit of French seduction. So what can the Pelicot trial achieve?

I meet feminists from Les Amazones d’Avignon, the creators of graffiti across the city supporting Gisèle. (So as not to spoil the city walls, they write slogans on paper that can be removed.) Their latest reads “20 ans pour chacun” — 20 years for each one. I suggest a drink in a café nearby: “Not in there,” says one Amazone, “that’s where all the rapists go.” Blandine Deverlanges, 56, is part of the Coalition Féministe Loi Intégrale putting 130 proposals about sexual violence before the French parliament, including a ban on lawyers harassing victims in court. They are disgusted the defence asked Gisèle why she swam naked in her own swimming pool.

“This is a trial,” says Deverlanges, “of one extraordinary man, the monster Pelicot, and many ordinary men.” And as we talk I see a group of them emerge nervously from their favoured café and head back to the court. A collective noun for rapists? A violation, a banality, a shame.

(archive)

#radblr #radfem #radical feminism #gender critical #gisele pelicot #terfblr

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thebusylilbee · 5 months ago

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"Chère Gisèle Pelicot, vous êtes entrée dans nos vies comme au tribunal d’Avignon, par la grande porte. [...] Le jour de l’ouverture du procès de vos violeurs a aussi été celui de l’officialisation de votre divorce. [Une meute] vous attend dans la salle d’audience : celle des 50 hommes qui sont jugés pour viol en réunion. Il y en aurait des dizaines d’autres qu’on n’a pas pu identifier. Vous faites face. Rien ne vous préparait à être dans cette salle d’audience. Un des accusés est arrivé en retard parce que, dit-il, il devait accompagner son fils à l’école pour la rentrée. Je me suis demandé qui avait accompagné vos petits-enfants, qui faisaient, eux aussi, leur rentrée scolaire. Je sais que vous avez pensé à eux à ce moment précis.

Réalité difficile à accepter

Vous les voyez tous pour la première fois sauf ce voisin que vous croisiez parfois dans la vie d’avant, celle qui ne reviendra jamais, celle de la maison du Vaucluse et de l’ignorance préservée. Vous les regardez. Ils regardent leurs pieds. Ils n’avaient jamais vu vos yeux, Jean, Didier, Jean-Luc, Romain, Redouan, Cédric, Grégory, Karim, Jean-Marc, Philippe, Quentin, Nicolas, Vincent, Patrick, Paul et les autres… On ploie sous la longueur de la liste et la banalité des profils. Les trois quarts d’entre eux ne reconnaissent pas les viols, comme tous ceux qui font les gros titres de l’actualité, les PPDA, Nicolas Hulot, Salim Berrada, Gérard Miller, Olivier Duhamel, Benoît Jacquot, Jacques Doillon, Gérard Depardieu…

Leurs arguments sont toujours les mêmes. Ils font tourner l’infect disque rayé du mensonge complaisant. Ils n’ont pas compris ce qu’ils faisaient. Ils sont sûrs d’être, eux aussi, des types bien, pas des monstres, même quand on leur montre les vidéos des crimes. Ils sont pompier, journaliste, étudiant, chauffeur routier, gardien de prison, infirmier, retraité, conseiller municipal, nos amis, nos amants, nos pères, nos frères. Une réalité difficile à accepter.

Un seul s’est adressé à vous pour vous présenter des excuses. Leur défense est un échantillon chimiquement pur de la violence patriarcale et des masques derrière lesquels elle s’abrite pour prospérer. « Le patriarcat est dans la maison ce que le fascisme est dans le monde », écrivait Virginia Woolf dans Trois guinées (1938).

Certains évoquent le poncif éculé de la pulsion, d’autres la frustration sexuelle due à l’absence prolongée d’une compagne officielle. Il y a celui qui trouve « bizarre » d’avoir fait ça. On trouve aussi des traces de « libertinage incompris ». Il y a celui qui ose l’ahurissant « viol involontaire ».

« Consentement par délégation »

Puisque vous étiez comateuse, il est difficile de prétendre que vous étiez partante. Difficile, mais quelques-uns tentent quand même le « j’ai pu croire qu’elle faisait semblant de dormir ». Les plus audacieux essayent le « consentement par délégation » ; le mari était d’accord, « il fait ce qu’il veut avec sa femme ». Une femme est soumise à son compagnon. L’ordre immémorial de la hiérarchie masculine est respecté.

Ce qui est certain, c’est qu’ils ont tous bandé à l’idée de pénétrer un corps inerte. Le viol et l’ordinaire de la sexualité semblent avoir beaucoup de points communs dans leur esprit. Ils ont bien le droit. Ils ont le pouvoir de le faire. Ils n’allaient pas passer à côté d’un viol gratuit près de chez eux. Ils ont été biberonnés à la haine des femmes, au mépris qui s’excite de l’impuissance de l’autre. Le sexisme féroce transpire de leur discours. La pornographie violente dont certains collectionnaient les images les plus répugnantes y est sans doute pour quelque chose. La domination absolue les a fait jouir. Ils ne voient pas le problème. Même au tribunal. Même devant vous.

Ils font ce que font la plupart des hommes accusés : ils se victimisent et rajoutent une couche de mépris sur celle qu’ils ont déjà humiliée. Ils sont tombés dans un traquenard. On les a piégés. Vous êtes restée là, à les écouter sans ciller, droite sur le ring. Vous décrivez désormais votre vie comme un combat de boxe. Le combat est déloyal. L’adversaire a les armes du terrorisme patriarcal. Que vous soyez à terre ou debout, cassée ou le poing levé, votre droiture fait craqueler la carapace d’impunité qui les a longtemps protégés.

Ce n’est pas seulement vous, Gisèle, qu’ils ont traitée comme une chose. Ils nous disent, à toutes, notre insignifiance. Votre force nous rend la nôtre. Merci pour ce cadeau immense.

Hélène Devynck, journaliste et autrice d’Impunité, (Seuil, 2022)"

#french #france #upthebaguette #cw misogyny #tw rape #patriarchy #feminism #mazan rape case

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coochiequeens · 5 months ago

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Men say shit like women should get married to have a man who will protect them then do shit like this.

Woman, 72, 'drugged by her husband so 50 men could rape her while unconscious' appears in court after bravely waiving right to anonymity as he goes on trial along with men 'filmed having sex with her'

Gisele P opted for a public trial and waived her right to anonymity, lawyers said

Police say she suffered 92 rapes by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified

Those identified will also go on trial alongside the main suspect, Dominique P

By David Averre 2 September 2024

French woman whose husband is on trial for drugging her and allowing dozens of strangers to rape her while unconscious appeared in court for the first time after waiving her right to anonymity.

Gisele P., 72, was seen standing in the courtroom supported by her three children to witness the opening day of the trial of Dominique P., 71, which began this morning in Avignon.

He is accused of orchestrating a sick rape ring, using an online forum to invite a horde of men to his home in Mazan near Avignon before filming them assaulting his wife over nine years between 2011 and 2020.

Police counted a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom were identified and are being tried alongside the main suspect, a former employee at France's power utility company EDF.

Presiding judge Roger Arata announced that all the hearings would be public, granting Gisele her wish for 'complete publicity until the end' of the court case, according to her lawyer, Stephane Babonneau.

Gisele could have opted for a trial behind closed doors given the nature of her husband's alleged crimes, but 'that's what her attackers would have wanted', another lawyer named Antoine Camus said.

Still, the trial will be 'a horrible ordeal' for Gisele.

'For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years,' Camus said, adding that his client had 'no recollection' of the abuse which she only discovered in 2020.

Gisele P. - a French woman whose husband is on trial for drugging her and allowing dozens of strangers to rape her while unconscious - is seen arriving in court today

Dominique P. is accused of orchestrating the sick rape ring, filming strangers he met online attacking his wife while she was drugged between 2011 and 2020 Ladies let's share this face everytime men spew crap about men protecting women

The President of the Vaucluse Assises Court Roger Arata speaks at the courthouse during the trial of Dominique P. in the south of France, in Avignon, on September 2, 2024

The couple met in 1971 and married two years later before having three kids together.

Gisele previously said her husband had asked her to try swinging - a request she refused.

But she also described him as a 'great guy' with a 'normal sexuality'.

Their eldest son said nothing in his father's behaviour suggested any deviance and that 'he had always fulfilled his role as a father', while their daughter spoke fondly of her father's presence in her life as a young girl.

The heinous campaign of sexual abuse masterminded by Dominique P. is said to have begun in 2011 when the couple was living near Paris, and continued after they moved to Mazan two years later.

Police began to investigate the defendant Dominique P. in September 2020 when he was caught by a security guard secretly filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping centre.

Police said they found hundreds of pictures and videos of his wife on his computer, visibly unconscious and mostly in the foetal position.

The images are alleged to show dozens of rapes in the couple's home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people roughly 20 miles from Avignon in Provence.

Investigators also found chats on a site called coco.fr, since shut down by police, in which he recruited strangers to come to their home and have intercourse with his wife.

Dominique P. later admitted to investigators that he gave his wife powerful tranquilisers, especially Temesta, an anxiety-reducing drug.

Demonstrators hold placards and smoke bombs during a protest outside the courthouse during the trial of a man accused of drugging his wife for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France, in Avignon, on September 2, 2024

Beatrice Zavarro, lawyer for the accused Dominique P, waits at the courthouse during the trial of her client accused of drugging his wife for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France, in Avignon, on September 2, 2024

The husband took part in the rapes, filmed them and encouraged the other men using degrading language, according to prosecutors.

In previous hearings, he explained how he took a range of precautions to avoid his wife or family from discovering the dark deeds.

French outlet Le Point reported how Dominique P. imposed strict rules on each of the men who he invited to rape his wife: no perfume or tobacco, cut and clean nails, hands first run under hot water so as not to risk waking the victim.

The attackers would park a few minutes from the couple's home and undress in the kitchen. No money changed hands.

The accused rapists included a forklift driver, a fire brigade officer, a company boss and a journalist.

Some were single, others married or divorced, and some were family men. Most participated just once, but some took part up to six times.

Their defence has been that they simply helped a libertine couple live out its fantasies, but Dominique P. told investigators that all were aware that his wife had been drugged without her knowledge.

An expert said her state 'was closer to a coma than to sleep'.

Her husband told prosecutors that only three men left the house quickly after arriving, while all others proceeded to have intercourse with his wife.

Dominique P., who said he was raped by a male nurse when he was nine, is ready to face 'his family and his wife', his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro said.

'He is ashamed of what he did, it is unforgivable,' Zavarro told reporters on Monday morning, adding that the case was 'in a form of addiction'.

'My client's line of conduct is that he recognises what he did and there has not been an ounce of protest since the beginning,' she said in comments carried by French press.

But this trial may not be his last.

The defendant has also been charged with a 1991 murder and rape, which he denies, and an attempted rape in 1999, to which he admitted after DNA testing.

Experts said the man does not appear to be mentally ill, but reportedly concluded that had a need to feel 'all-powerful' over the female body in assessments included in court documents.

The shocking trial is due to last until December 20

#France #Avignon #Gisele P is a hero for a agreeing to a public trial just to make sure the rapists ate exposed #How the hell can Beatrice Zavarro defend that man

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rebellum · 2 months ago

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I just learned about the Gisele Pelicot case.. Oh my god. She is so brave for making the trial public. Those men should never know peace. Wherever they go, for the rest of their lives, people should know who they are.

and he only got caught because of another crime. this is not the only time this thing has happened, he's just the only one to be caught doing it. she would have just never known. there are, doubtlessly, other people in the world doing this, who would never be caught. thats terrifying.

seriously STRONG trigger warning for rape, sexual violence, and rape culture, if you are in doubt about your emotional ability to handle it, I recommend you do NOT look up the case, and to block "Gisele Pelicot" "Gisèle Pélicot" and "Mazan rapes"

i feel sick, and kind of wished i never found out about the case

#Gisele Pelicot /////#Gisèle Pélicot ////#Mazan rapes ////

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head-post · 1 month ago

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Gisèle Pelicot speaking after her ex-husband found guilty of rape, sentenced to 20 years

Gisèle Pelicot spoke of her “very difficult ordeal” after 51 men were found guilty in a drug and rape case, according to AP News.

Your messages moved me deeply, and they gave me the strength to come back, every day, and survive through these long daily hearings. This trial was a very difficult ordeal.

The men were convicted by a court in the southern French city of Avignon on Thursday and received three to 20 years in prison. Pelicot expressed support for other victims of sexual violence whose cases had not drawn as much attention.

I want you to know that we share the same fight.

Pelicot became an icon for many women in France and the rest of the world when she demanded that all evidence be heard in open trial.

I never regretted making this decision. I have trust in our capacity to collectively project ourselves toward a future where all, women and men, can live in harmony, with respect and mutual understanding. Thank you.

The court sentenced her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, to 20 years in prison for drugging and raping her, as well as allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious. The sentence was the maximum possible under French law and Dominique, 72, would not be eligible to ask for parole until at least two-thirds of the sentence had been served.

The lawyer of Dominique Pelicot, Béatrice Zavarro, said she would consider an appeal, but also expressed hope that Gisèle Pelicot would find comfort in the court’s judgements.

I wanted Mrs. Pelicot to be able to emerge from these hearings in peace, and I think that the verdicts will contribute to this relief for Mrs. Pelicot.

Accusation details

Of the 50 people charged with rape, only one was acquitted, but he was instead found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Prosecutors had asked for 10 to 18 years for the accused, except for Dominique Pelicot. However, the court was more lenient, with many sentenced to less than ten years in prison.

All of the defendants were accused of participating in Dominique Pelicot’s filthy fantasies of rape and violence, which were played out in the couple’s retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.

Dominique first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard busted him for secretly filming women’s skirts. Police subsequently discovered his library of home images documenting years of abuse of his wife. Those included more than 20,000 photos and videos saved on computer discs and catalogued in folders labelled “abuse,” “her rapists,” “night alone” etc.

Investigators counted 72 different rapists in the video, but were unable to identify them all. While some of the defendants, including Dominique Pelicot, pleaded guilty to rape, many did not, even despite the video evidence.

The hearings sparked a wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be broadened to include a specific reference to consent. Some put the blame on Dominique, claiming he had misled them into thinking they were taking part in a consensual perversion.

Read more HERE

#world news #news #world politics #europe #european news #european union #eu news #eu politics #france #france news #france 2024 #gisele pelicot #pelicot case #dominique pelicot

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thatsonemorbidcorvid · 2 years ago

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Full text below cut, trigger warning for the whole thing.

A French man has been accused of drugging his wife and the recording at least 51 men rape her while she slept over the period of 10 years.

Dominique P, a pensioner who had been married for over 50 years, allegedly mixed the anti-anxiety drug Lorazepam into his wife's evening meal, La Monde reported.

He would then invite his "guests" into their house in Mazan to rape his sleeping wife between 2011 and 2020.

A total of 51 men between the ages of 26-73 have been identified, arrested and charged with rape following an inquiry launched in 2020 in the southern city of Avignon.

The suspect reportedly found the men on “a son insu” - an active French internet forum where members discuss performing sexual acts on women without their consent and often drugged.

The exchanges on the web forum were erased after being linked to a criminal investigation into paedophile, racist or anti-Semitic content and the sale of illicit substances.

Law enforcement officials learned about the videos during a preliminary investigation three years ago when the suspect was caught trying to film woman in a changing room with a hidden camera.

The videos were found on the man's computer, where they were meticulously archived in a file called "Abuses". The titles of the hundreds of videos indicate a date, a first name and the nature of the actions, according to the French newspaper.

Investigators have identified 92 cases of sexual assault of the woman by 83 suspects, but are yet to identify all the men.

Tobacco and perfume were banned by the suspect in order to avoid strong smells that could waken his wife. The men were asked to wash their hands in warm water to avoid sudden temperature change and were made to undress in the kitchen to avoid leaving clothes in the bedroom.

The "guests" had to park near a school and walk in the dark to the house to avoid raising neighbours' suspicion.

Some claimed they had no idea his wife has not consented to the sexual acts, while one person denied it was rape, saying: “It’s his wife, he does what he likes with her.”

According to prosecutors in Avignon, the suspect insisted that "none of the men who came to his house gave up going through with sexual acts on his wife given her state".

"He never used violence or threats against anyone so that rapes would be committed. Each individual was in possession of his free will to stop these acts and leave,” the prosecutors said.

When the woman was asked to talk about her husband in November 2020 during the initial investigation, she described him as a "great guy" and "kind and caring". She said he tried to get to agree to partner-swapping but she refused as “she didn’t like to be touched without having feelings (for someone)”.

When the police informed her of the tapes, she reportedly began pieceing together the past. The woman said she had flashbacks and that the drugging could have been the reason behind her frequent fatigue and “absent-mindedness”.

Medical examinations found she had been infected with four sexually transmitted diseases.

If the investigating magistrate follows the prosecutor’s indictment, a "historic trial" is expected to take place early next year with 52 defendants in the same box.

The woman has filed for a divorce.

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biarritzzz · 25 days ago

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The British government along with the rest of western European governments choose to endanger their own population by importing the most dangerously violent foreign trash into their countries and then protecting them at all costs.

It gets worse (if that was possible):

Oh look. What a shock. We are all shocked that browns side with their own. What a huge revelation that is.

The muslim women’s network complained that too little attention was paid to muslim girls also abused by Pakistani gangs

In other words: these cunts didn’t care when white girls were being raped and tortured by Paki trash, they only opened their mouth when muslim girls faced the same and probably whined about ‘racism’ as per usual.

In case you still believed in female solidarity.

And of course: white people are the enemy. Yep they’re not even hiding it anymore.

White girls = kuffar sluts. But remember: anti-white racism doesn’t exist.

The establishment and media are all on the side of these brown invaders. Admitting they were wrong about everything is not an option. So they cover it up or they simply don’t report on it, unlike the Mazan trial which got ample coverage, including from international news outlets.

Brits should be rioting about this massive scandal. It’s horrific. Some victims and their parents were even arrested by the police under dubious charges. Don’t tell me this isn’t two-tier policing.

-> Every single brown and black needs to be deported out of Europe. Every single one. Man, woman, child, it doesn’t matter how supposedly ‘kind’ and ‘integrated’ they are. They’re not, never are and never will be.

#The victims of diversity #Courage media #Rotherham #Rochdale

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someone-will-remember-us · 3 months ago

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A total of 51 men are on trial over their alleged attacks on Gisèle Pelicot, recruited by her then-husband Dominique Pelicot, who has admitted drugging and raping her.

The 50 men accused of rape and assault alongside Dominique Pelicot are aged between 26 and 74. They include a nurse, a journalist, a prison warden, a local councillor, a soldier, lorry drivers and farm workers. They each face up to 20 years in prison.

In total, 49 are accused of rape, one of attempted rape and one of sexual assault. Five others are also accused of possessing child abuse imagery.

Most lived in south-eastern France within a 60km radius of the village of Mazan, where the Pelicots lived. Six have previous convictions for domestic violence, two have convictions for sexual violence. A total of 23 have a criminal record for offences such as drunk-driving and possession of drugs.

Some of the accused men have admitted rape but said they did not set out with this intention, and have apologised in court to Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a grandmother and former logistics manager. Others have denied the charge of rape, saying they believed they were taking part in a game by the couple.

Gisèle Pelicot was unknowingly sedated and raped by her former husband, Dominique Pelicot, 71, who crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and drinks and invited men to rape her over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020.

Pelicot has admitted the charges against him and said that for almost a decade he was in contact with men on an online chatroom titled “without her knowledge” where he would organise for strangers to come to the couple’s home

“I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” Pelicot told the court.

The case is being heard by a panel of five professional judges in the southern city of Avignon and runs until December. Gisèle Pelicot has waived her right to anonymity in order for the trial to be held in public, saying: “Shame must change sides.”

As the men appear in court over the course of the four-month trial, the Guardian will detail their profiles and testimony.

Cyrille D, 54

Trained as a butcher, Cyrille D is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in her home in September 2019. Cyrille D’s partner, the mother of his children, was on holiday at the time. He said he was sexually frustrated in his relationship and had gone on to the online chatroom to console himself.

In court, Cyrille D admitted rape, saying he had realised later that he had not gained Gisèle Pelicot’s consent, only her husband’s. He said Gisèle Pelicot was clearly unconscious but that her husband had been “insistent”. He said: “I’m sorry, I was naive, a little stupid, an idiot.” He told the court that while in prison on remand he had understood that “women do not belong to men”.

Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer said video evidence had showed that the alleged rape by Cyrille D had put her life in danger as she had risked not being able to breathe.

Cyrille D detailed a violent childhood at the hands of his alcoholic father, who he said would wait outside school with a meat cleaver to attack him and threaten him. “My father was Hitler,” he told the court. After a brutal public beating by his father outside school, Cyrille D was placed in care as a teenager.

Lionel R, 44

A worker at the Pelicots’ local supermarket in Carpentras, Lionel R was a married father of three when he made contact with Dominique Pelicot. In court, Lionel R admitted raping Gisèle Pelicot on 2 December 2018 at her home, but he said he had not intended to commit rape.

“Since I never obtained Mrs Pelicot’s consent, I have no choice but to accept the facts,” he told the court. Turning to Gisèle Pelicot, he said: “I am sorry, I can only imagine the nightmare you’ve lived through … and I am part of this nightmare.” He said: “I never told myself: ‘I will rape that woman” but he admitted: “I’m guilty of rape.” He added that he should have left when he saw she was unconscious, and that it was cowardly of him not to have said anything.

The court heard that Dominique Pelicot had previously brought an unsuspecting Gisèle Pelicot shopping at the supermarket so that Lionel R could see if he was attracted to her.

Lionel R told the court he had been sexually abused at the age of 12 to 13 by the president of the pétanque club in his village.

Jacques C, 72

A former fire officer who had worked as a truck driver and then owned a pizzeria, Jacques C had been married for 25 years and had two children.

He told the court he denied rape. He said he had been “naive” and he thought that Gisèle Pelicot would wake up and it was a game by the couple.

Jacques C admitted touching Pelicot, but said there had been no penetration and therefore no rape.

Jacques C told the court he considered that his religious education had made him a “giving person” who did good and respected women. He said he loved women “in all their complexity”.

Jean-Pierre M, 63

A former lorry driver for an agricultural cooperative in southern France, Jean-Pierre M is not accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot. Instead, he is accused of using the same technique to drug and rape his own wife, and organising for Pelicot to rape her with him.

Described in court as a “disciple” of Pelicot, he admitted sedating his wife, with whom he had five children, and enlisting Pelicot to rape her.

The two men made contact in the online chatroom called “without her knowledge”. Pelicot is alleged to have provided sedatives to drug the man’s wife, explained the method and travelled to rape the woman himself.

Twelve rapes of Jean-Pierre’s wife are alleged to have taken place between 2015 and 2020. Jean-Pierre told the court that he admitted the charges.

Pelicot admitted raping Jean-Pierre’s wife on several occasions and said he regretted his actions. He said he had cut contact with the couple after Jean-Pierre’s wife woke up during one of the assaults while he was in her bedroom.

The court heard how Jean-Pierre’s childhood in the French countryside was marked by extreme poverty, extreme violence and he was the victim of sexual abuse within his family. “I was raised by pigs in the woods,” he had told his children.

Joan K, 26

A soldier in the French military, Joan K is the youngest man on trial. He was 22 at the time of his alleged raping of Gisèle Pelicot on two separate visits to her home in 2019 and 2020.

He told the court: “I’m a rapist because the law says I am” – but he said he had not intended to rape and “at the time I did not know what consent was”.

He said he had been invited to the couple’s home by Dominique Pelicot for an encounter and had not asked for Gisèle Pelicot’s consent, saying he learned only in prison what consent was.

He said he had found it strange that Gisèle Pelicot was snoring, and that he knew she was unconscious but he had not known that meant she had not consented.

In November 2019, Joan K was absent for the premature birth of his daughter on the night he was accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot for the first time.

Born in French Guiana, he joined his brother in Avignon when he was 16 before enlisting in the army. The court heard he had lived on the streets as a teenager and three of his brothers had died. He lost his army job when he was arrested. He was described by a psychologist as a chronic user of alcohol and cannabis, “depressive, impulsive and solitary”.

Hugues M, 39

A tiler, motorbike enthusiast and father of two, Hugues M is accused of the attempted rape of Gisèle Pelicot a few days before his then girlfriend’s birthday in October 2019. He denies the charge. He said he did not know Gisèle Pelicot was drugged and had not looked at her face, just her body.

His ex-partner Emilie O, 33, who met him online and lived with him for five years, told the court she feared she may have been drugged and sexually assaulted by him herself. “I don’t know if I was raped,” she said. “It’s terrible. I will always have doubts.”

She told the court that one night in 2019 she had woken up to find her partner attempting to assault her. She launched a police complaint, but it was dismissed for “lack of material evidence”. She told the court she had experienced “dizziness” between September 2019 and March 2020, but investigators did not detect any substances that might have affected her at the time.

Husamettin D, 43

A married father who had given up part-time work to care for his disabled son, Husamettin D is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in June 2019. He denied the charge in court saying: “I don’t accept being called a rapist, I’m not a rapist.”

The court heard that Husamettin D had made contact with Dominique Pelicot in the chatroom and had gone to the Pelicots’ home the same night, telling his own wife he was going out.

Pelicot had told him he was looking for an “Arab” man for his wife – Husamettin, born in Turkey, used the online pseudonym “Karim”.

He admitted that Gisèle Pelicot “seemed dead”, with her leg dangling oddly, but he said he had thought it was a scenario or game and that she was pretending.

He said Dominique Pelicot had said his wife was in agreement. He said he had not known she was drugged.

The court heard that Husamettin D had become addicted to cannabis from the age of 11, and had lived in children’s homes. In 2000, he was convicted for dealing drugs.

Fabien S, 39

A man with 16 previous convictions ranging from armed robbery and drug dealing to domestic violence and sexual assault of a minor, Fabien S said he admitted the charge of raping Gisèle Pelicot in August 2018. But he said he had not gone to the Pelicots’ home with the intention of raping her.

“I didn’t go there to rape her. I didn’t know I was supposed to rape her, but I recognise the facts,” he said, adding he had “not paid attention” to whether or not she had consented.

He said he wasn’t interested in a scenario where a woman was unconscious because he liked to hear women scream. He apologised to Gisèle Pelicot in court.

The court heard that Fabien S allegedly raped Gisèle Pelicot in her dining room. Asked how this was possible, Dominique Pelicot said he had put drugs in her meal and carried her unconscious to the dining room table.

The court heard that Fabien S had been sexually abused by his father from the age of two, then placed in different foster families where he faced further violence and sexual abuse, and that he was admitted to psychiatric care at the age of 16. From 18 to 28 he lived on the streets in Toulon as an alcoholic.

Mathieu D, 53

The father of two had worked as baker for 25 years before having to leave his job because of an intolerance to wheat.

He is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot with Dominique Pelicot on 3 October 2020. He admitted the facts, saying he was high on the drug MDMA at the time and thought it was a game with a married couple.

Mathieu D accepted later that Gisèle Pelicot had not been in a fit state to consent. “I can’t deny it was rape,” he said.

The court heard that Mathieu D’s stepfather had been violent. Mathieu D told investigators he was inspired by Buddhism and “the balance of karmas”.

Andy R, 37

An unemployed agricultural labourer and married father of two, Andy R has two domestic violence convictions and is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home on New Year’s Eve 2018.

He said he did not intend to rape Gisèle Pelicot, telling the court: “As the husband had given me permission, in my mind she agreed to it.”

Andy R arrived at the Pelicots’ home an hour after first making contact online with Dominique Pelicot on New Year’s Eve. He said he had “nothing else to do” that night because his brothers hadn’t invited him to their New Year’s Eve party. He said he had thought it was a sexual “game” between the Pelicots.

The court heard he had been addicted to alcohol since he was 13 or 14, and was a regular user of cocaine.

Simone M, 42

A builder, former soldier and father of five, Simone M lived on the next street to the Pelicots in the village of Mazan. He is the only alleged rapist whom Gisèle Pelicot recognised when she was shown video evidence by police.

She told the court he had come into their living room once to discuss cycling with her husband. “I saw him now and then in the bakery; I would say hello. I never thought he’d come and rape me,” she said.

The former mountain infantryman made contact with Dominique Pelicot in the online chatroom before realising they lived less than 200 metres apart. Simone M lived opposite the tennis club where Dominique Pelicot played. “Things were going badly with my ex-wife, I was looking for love, an encounter to calm myself,” Simone M told the court.

Dominique Pelicot suggested Simone M first come to the house during the day “to see how beautiful my wife is”, adding: “If she asks, say you’ve come to discuss my bike.”

Simone M is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on the night of 14 November 2018. He denies rape. He said he thought Gisèle Pelicot was only pretending to be asleep and would wake up. “I’m not a rapist,” he told the court.

His ex-wife told the court he had once threatened her with an axe.

Simone M is from New Caledonia, where he grew up. As a teenager he was abused and raped by a man his parents had sent him to live with as a labourer. The court heard he had a complex about his penis size and needed constant reassurance. He had debts and periods of alcoholism.

He has a 15-month-old daughter with his current partner, who told the court she stands by him.

Thierry Po, 61

A refrigeration specialist and father of three from Bouches-du-Rhône in southern France, Thierry Po is also charged with possession of hundreds of child abuse images found on a USB stick after his arrest for the alleged rape of Gisèle Pelicot. He admits those charges but denies raping Gisèle Pelicot on 21 August 2020.

He said hadn’t seen anything abnormal about the night he went to the Pelicots’ home, believing he was meeting a couple. “I always thought Mrs Pelicot would wake up,” he said. “She wasn’t cold, she wasn’t dead, her skin was soft.”

He said he had not sought Gisèle Pelicot’s consent because he had lots of experience of encounters with couples when it was mostly the man who gave consent for the woman. He said he had had three “major” previous experiences where a husband had invited him to have sex with a wife and “she’ll be asleep, she doesn’t want to know, we’ll film it”. In one case, the woman had woken up. In two cases, he had left without seeing the women’s faces. He said he couldn’t tell if those women had been asleep or not.

He told the court: “After I leave prison, I’d like to create an association to get men like me to understand that consent is important. I’d go to swingers’ clubs and say: “Don’t forget to get consent!”

Jérôme V, 46

The former grocery store worker and father of three is one of the few accused men who admit the charges of raping Gisèle Pelicot with the knowledge that she was drugged. He told the expert psychiatrist in the case that he was aware she had not consented.

He allegedly went to the Pelicots’ home six times between March and June 2020 to rape her during the first Covid lockdown in France. A volunteer in the fire service, he lived 30 minutes’ drive away.

He told the court: “I didn’t keep going back because rape mode was my thing, but because I couldn’t control my sexuality.” He said he was at first attracted by the idea of having an inert body at his disposal and being free to act however he wanted.

He said his life was defined by sexual urges, and he was regularly unfaithful to partners because they “couldn’t meet my demands” and he tried extreme practices to break the “monotony”. He said he paid “less and less” attention to his partners.

Jérôme V said he was addicted to sex and that Pelicot took advantage of that. In court, looking over at Gisèle Pelicot, he said he was ashamed “to have done bad to someone who seems so pure”. At his home, a list of 89 names of sexual partners were found. “I needed to count my conquests,” he said.

His current partner told the court she stood by him and visited him regularly in prison.

He said he was never supported or protected by his parents. He was bullied at school and once forcibly stripped in public by other pupils at high school.

Thierry Pa, 54

A former builder who turned to alcohol when his 18-year-old son died in a road collision, Thierry Pa was an inpatient on a psychiatric ward after suffering from depression when investigators identified him as allegedly raping Gisèle Pelicot several months earlier in 2020.

He had separated from his wife a few weeks before his alleged rape of Gisèle Pelicot in July 2020 and had left his family home, saying he was unable to bear the photographs and memories of his son.

He said he had contacted Dominique Pelicot online for an encounter with a couple. He denied rape, saying: “I didn’t set out from my house saying: ‘I’m going to rape someone.’” He said: “I don’t understand how she didn’t feel anything, didn’t realise.” He said he thought Pelicot may have drugged him, and that he was manipulated and brainwashed by Pelicot.

His ex-wife told the court the alleged rape was out of character. She said she would like to get back together with him.

The court heard that Thierry Pa’s mother was an alcoholic and his father was often absent.

Adrien L, 34

Adrien L, a former building site manager from Carpentras, was convicted last year of the rapes of three former partners in a different trial and is serving a 14-year jail sentence.

He denied raping Gisèle Pelicot in March 2014. He said he had thought he was taking part in a game and did not think she was drugged.

Aged 23 at the time of the alleged rape of Gisèle Pelicot, he is one of the youngest men on trial. He was educated at private school before joining his father’s successful building business, and was described as coming from a higher-income background than many of the other men accused.

He told the court that when he was 21 he discovered after a paternity test that he was not the biological father of the three-year-old girl he was raising with his girlfriend. He said from that point onwards, “I had a hatred towards women”.

The night he was alleged to have raped Gisèle Pelicot, his new girlfriend was nine months pregnant and gave birth 10 days later. He admitted to court experts that he had mistreated his pregnant girlfriend and called her a whore.

The court heard that he was sexually abused by a cousin when he was 10.

Jean T, 52

A former roofer born on the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion, Jean T was in a nine-year relationship when he drove two-and-a-half hours from Lyon to allegedly rape Gisèle Pelicot in her bed on the night of 21 September 2018.

He had made contact with Dominique Pelicot in the chatroom, where he used the name “Bill”.

He told the court: “I am not a rapist”. He said he thought Dominique Pelicot had drugged him. “I don’t remember anything,” he said.

In court, he recalled many details of the evening, including the house, the rules of undressing in the kitchen and seeing Gisèle Pelicot on the bed. But he told the court he had no memory of the actual moment of his alleged rape of Pelicot, and recalled only getting into his car afterwards when he drove home.

Judges observed that he had not appeared drugged in seven videos, in which he was active and gave a thumbs-up sign. He was asked why, if he feared he had been drugged, he did not report this to police. He said at the time he had thought: “It was a bad encounter, forget about it.”

The court heard he had regularly sought encounters with couples for more than a decade and had paid sex workers but “it felt dirty”.

Redouan E, 55

A former anaesthesia nurse in hospital operating theatres in Morocco, Redouan E lived in Avignon, where he worked as a community nurse.

He was married for the second time and in the process of adopting a young girl from Morocco. He was disappointed that the adoption process was stopped after he was arrested for allegedly raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home on a Saturday night in June 2019.

Redouan E told the court: “I plead not guilty.” He denied rape, saying he was the “victim of a trick” and had been too “terrified” of Dominique Pelicot to say no. Confronted with video evidence of several alleged rapes of Gisèle Pelicot, he said: “I was terrified, but you can’t see it.” He said he did not leave because he feared that would ruin Pelicot’s Saturday night.

He said he had not known Gisèle Pelicot was sedated. Asked in court, how, as a trained aneasthesia nurse, he had not seen that Gisèle Pelicot was unconscious, he said he thought she was pretending to be dead “but never that she’d been drugged”, and he believed he saw her move.

Patrick A, 60

A former factory worker and video-club owner from the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, Patrick A admitted the charge of raping Gisèle Pelicot but said he had taken part reluctantly because he was gay and had wanted an encounter with Dominique Pelicot, not his wife.

Patrick A met Dominique Pelicot in the online chatroom and they messaged on Skype, where Pelicot told him Gisèle Pelicot was a “prudish bitch who didn’t want threesomes” and said: “I’m looking for a pervert accomplice to abuse my wife, she takes sleeping pills and I take advantage.” Patrick A had replied: “OK.”

He told the court he had wanted so much to have a gay encounter with Dominique Pelicot that he was blinded by it and brainwashed. He said he raped Gisèle Pelicot “reluctantly” to “please” Dominique Pelicot. He questioned whether he may have been drugged.

“You are homosexual but you have committed a heterosexual rape, which you admit,” said Antoine Camus, Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer. “In this trial we have already heard of rapes committed ‘by accident’, your specificity is to plead rape committed ‘reluctantly’.”

Patrick A apologised in court. He told the court he had known he was gay from his teenage years but sought to hide it from his homophobic parents. He married a woman, had two children and after divorcing at 43 regularly met men for sex in saunas and backrooms of sex-shops in the Avignon region, and truck-drivers in motorway laybys.

Didier S, 68

A former long-distance lorry driver and divorced father of two, Didier S said he went to Dominique Pelicot’s house “exclusively for a homosexual encounter” with him. He denied the charge of raping Gisèle Pelicot on 30 January 2019. He said he had thought she was pretending to be asleep.

In court, he said he had had no intention to rape Gisèle Pelicot and was simply following her husband’s instructions. “It’s not me you should be angry with, it’s your husband,” he told Gisèle Pelicot in court, trying to catch her eye. She turned away.

He lived a 20-minute drive away, had logged on to the chatroom at 8pm one night, and two hours later went to the Pelicots’ home.

Five years earlier he underwent bladder and prostate surgery for cancer and had begun meeting men. The court heard he was raped when he was 16.

Karim S, 40

A computer expert with two university degrees, Karim S denied raping Gisèle Pelicot on 27 June 2020. He is also charged with possessing child abuse imagery found on his computer during the investigation. He denied those charges, saying he downloaded the images “inadvertently”.

He told the court of the night he went to the Pelicots’ home: “I did not go there with the aim of committing a crime and I had absolutely no idea that Mrs Pelicot was not consenting.” Messages between him and Pelicot showed them discussing Gisèle Pelicot in crude terms, referring to her not being aware of what was going on. Karim S had been told that Gisèle Pelicot would be “asleep from alcohol and a sleeping tablet” but he said he had thought it was a game.

Dominique Pelicot, who told Karim he was a doctor, invited him back in August. Karim said he feigned food poisoning as an excuse because the June encounter had been “too bizarre for me”.

He grew up in Marseille and had moved to a picturesque village half an hour’s drive from Mazan just before the Covid lockdowns of 2020.

Vincent C, 42

Vincent C, a carpenter, was convicted of domestic violence against his ex-partner in 2021 and given a six-month suspended sentence. The court heard he had had an alcohol addiction since he was a teenager.

He is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home on two occasions in October 2019 and January 2020. He denies rape. He admitted a sexual encounter but said he had had no intention of committing rape. He said he had thought Gisèle Pelicot would wake up.

He met Dominique Pelicot in the chatroom after a postcode search on the site to find people nearby. He tended to log on after his village bistro closed on a Saturday night.

“I was looking for sex,” he said, adding that he had not put much thought into it. He said he found the situation in the Pelicots’ bedroom “bizarre” but trusted the fact that he was “at a couple’s home, invited by the husband”. He said he felt no pleasure himself, but went back a second time because Dominique Pelicot had told him that he and Gisèle Pelicot had “enjoyed it”. Pelicot said Gisèle Pelicot had watched a video of his first visit and “liked it”, which for him, “closed the door on any doubt”, he said. He said he felt he had “satisfied” the Pelicots more than himself.

During his testimony, Gisèle Pelicot got up and briefly left the courtroom, appearing exasperated.

Jean-Marc L, 74

Describing himself as a former “international truck-driver between Paris and Baghdad”, the divorced grandfather is the oldest of the accused men.

He denied raping Gisèle Pelicot in May 2017. He said he had always thought that rape was “something violent … done by a madman, a brutal thing”, but that this had instead been a “sexual game”. He told the court he had only “obeyed orders” from Dominique Pelicot. He said: “She was going to wake up because it was a game.”

It was only after he left the house that he thought about whether Gisèle Pelicot had consented. He didn’t alert the police. “I should have done but it didn’t cross my mind.”

He said Dominique Pelicot, whom he had met beforehand in a supermarket car park, had told him he wanted to “punish” his wife for having had an affair in the past.

He said Pelicot asked him to come back another time “with a friend”, which he didn’t do, after mentioning it to another truck driver who said it wasn’t normal.

Jean-Marc L said he had often paid sex workers in Spain. “What truck driver hasn’t been to prostitutes?” he said in court.

Dominique D, 45

Dominique D, a lorry driver and former soldier, said he was contacted via the online chatroom in February 2015 by Dominique Pelicot, who said he was looking for a man as a “gift” for his wife “for Valentine’s Day”.

Dominique D is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six different occasions. Police found video evidence of five visits to the Pelicots’ house, but he told them of one further visit.

He denied rape, saying he had not intended to rape anyone. He told the court: “I didn’t wake up one morning and say to myself hey, today I’m going to go to a couple’s house and commit a crime.”

He said that before going to the Pelicots’ home for the first time in 2015, he had asked to see Gisèle Pelicot and was sent a video of her taken without her knowledge as she left the shower. He also briefly visited the home pretending to be an electrician and saw Gisèle Pelicot reading on the sofa. He said he felt he had enough guarantees from Dominique Pelicot, adding “I just forgot one big guarantee – Madame’s consent.”

He is the youngest of 16 children and was placed in care at the age of six months.

Mohamed R, 70

Mohamed R, a former discotheque worker from La Rochelle who in 1999 was sentenced to five years in prison for raping his 17-year-old daughter, is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in May 2019 at the holiday cottage of the Pelicots’ daughter, Caroline, on the island of Île-de-Ré in the west of France.

Mohamed R denied raping Gisèle Pelicot. He told the court: “I couldn’t imagine for a fraction of a second that Dominique Pelicot did that without his wife knowing.” He had been in contact with Dominique Pelicot via the online chatroom.

Dominique Pelicot was asked in court why he had drugged and raped Gisèle Pelicot not just at the couple’s own home but at their daughter’s holiday home, where the Pelicots often went with their grandchildren. The couple’s daughter and grandchildren were not at the cottage at the time.

Pelicot said: “There was no symbolism, it could have happened anywhere.”

Ahmed T, 54

Ahmed T, a plumber and former champion boxer married for more than 30 years with three children, is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at the couple’s home in June 2019. He denied rape and told the court: “I’m not a rapist, but if I had wanted to rape I wouldn’t have chosen a 57-year-old woman, I would have chosen a pretty one.”

He was in contact with Dominique Pelicot on a chat room, saying that at the time he was having less sex with his wife and he “did not want a mistress” but thought “why not” have an encounter with a couple. He said Dominique Pelicot had referred to Gisèle Pelicot as “la bourgeoise”, saying she was away a lot in Paris and home at weekends. He said he had thought Gisèle Pelicot must have been shy, and that he had trusted her husband.

Ahmed T said he travelled to the couple’s home by car after his own wife had gone to bed.

Redouane A, 40

Redouane A, an unemployed, separated father of four who has convictions for domestic violence, burglary and death threats and has served time in prison, went to the Pelicots’ home twice in 2019.

He denied rape. He said he had asked Dominique Pelicot if it was normal that Gisèle Pelicot was snoring and had been told: “Yes, we like doing it like that.”

He described the Pelicots’ home as “a beautiful house in Provence” with a “well-kept garden”.

He said he grew up on a housing estate, began smoking cannabis at 10 and was the victim of sexual abuse at this age, by an old man he met in the park who took him to his van. He left school at 16.

The question was raised in court of a possible diagnosis of schizophrenia, with one psychiatrist saying he instead had a personality disorder.

Mahdi D, 36

Mahdi D, a transport worker and father of one from Avignon, is accused of going to the Pelicots’ home once in October 2018.

He denied rape. He placed the responsibility on Dominique Pelicot, who he said had presented himself online as part of a couple who wanted to meet single men.

Mahdi D said of Gisèle Pelicot: “One can’t imagine what she has been through, she has been destroyed and I have thoughts not only for that poor woman but her whole entourage and family.” He said it was “terrible” for him to find himself caught up in something like this.

Cyril B, 47

Cyril B, a single lorry driver who described himself as a daily consumer of cannabis, is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at her home in November 2018. He was recorded by Dominique Pelicot in a video called “With Cyril from Carpentras.”

He denied rape and said he had been manipulated and was not capable of committing a rape. He said he was also a victim of the situation, as he had been duped by Dominique Pelicot, whom he had met on an online chatroom.

He told the court he had previously had encounters with couples he met via websites.

Cyprien C, 43

Cyprien C, a former lorry driver and father of one, is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in her bed in Mazan in 2017.

He denied rape. During cross-examination, he accepted a sexual encounter had taken place and said he was sorry to Gisèle Pelicot but that he could “not say more than that”. He did not say the word rape, telling the court “I can’t say that it’s rape”, arguing that Dominique Pelicot had led him to believe that Gisèle Pelicot was playing a role in a game and “would pretend to be asleep”.

The court heard he grew up in children’s homes and foster families and later suffered from alcohol addiction as an adult.

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