Gisele Pelicot Trial in France
An important session was held in France on Tuesday in the trial of Gisele Pelicot, who was allegedly gang raped for ten years by her ex-husband and the men he had summoned to her home. Lawyers for the 51 defendants on trial on rape charges used their last chance to prove that Gisele Pelicot’s ex-husband Dominique Pelicot manipulated them into raping his wife.
While some of the defendants accept the rape accusations, the majority of them claim that they were deceived by Dominique Pelicot. Dominique Pelicot, who was asked what she thought about this situation, claimed that the defendants ‘said so to save themselves’. Gisele Pelicot, the victim of the case, described this gang rape case in which 51 men were accused as ‘a case of cowardice’ and stressed that France’s ‘macho, patriarchal society’ that ‘trivialises rape’ must change.
Defendants claim to have been ‘manipulated’ by their ex-wives
Gisele Pelicot, who has not preferred to use her right to anonymity since the trial, which is expected to end next month, started in September, is now tired of the course of the trial, which is followed with great interest around the world. Listening to the statements of the defendants one by one, Pelicot stated that he spoke to each of them by looking into their eyes.
“At what moment did Mrs Pelicot give you her consent when you entered that bedroom?” Gisele Pelicot asked the accused, who denied that they had raped her. She learnt that she had been drugged into a coma by her husband for ten years and then raped by him and strangers he had invited into the house. In November 2020, police searched his computer after security guards discovered footage of his ex-wife Dominique Pelicot pulling up women’s skirts in supermarkets. Police found thousands of videos on his computer of men raping his wife while she was unconscious, and uncovered the shocking truth.
Gisele Pelicot was unaware of what was happening and learned that she was raped by dozens of people between 2011 and 2020 after she was drugged. Her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot had burst into tears in court in September, saying ‘like others in this room, I am a rapist’ and admitted the charges.
