Gisèle Pélicot (left) arrives within the Avignon court docket home, in Avignon, southern France, on Thursday.
Lewis Joly/AP
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Lewis Joly/AP
AVIGNON, France — A girl who was allegedly drugged by her now ex-husband in order that she might be raped by different males whereas she was unconscious testified Thursday that her world collapsed when police uncovered the years of alleged abuse.
Talking in a peaceful and clear voice, Gisèle Pélicot detailed with spectacular composure the horror of discovering that her former partner had systematically filmed the handfuls of suspected rapes — storing hundreds of photographs that police investigators later discovered.
“It’s unbearable,” she informed the court docket within the southern French metropolis of Avignon in an hour of testimony. “I have so much to say that I don’t always know where to start.”
Dominique Pélicot, now 71, and 50 different males are standing trial on prices of aggravated rape and resist 20 years in jail. The trial began on Monday and is anticipated to run till December. Thursday marked the primary time that Gisèle Pélicot, additionally in her 70s, had testified.
The Related Press doesn’t usually determine victims of sexual crimes. However Gisèle Pélicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, mentioned she accepted that her title could be revealed in the identical method that she insisted that the trial be held in public.
She informed the court docket that she hopes her testimony would possibly assist spare different ladies from related ordeals. She mentioned she pushed for the trial in open court docket in solidarity with different ladies who go unrecognized as victims of sexual crimes.
She and her husband of fifty years had three youngsters. After they retired, the couple moved right into a home in Mazan, a small city in Provence.
“I thought we were a close couple,” she informed the court docket.
However in late 2020, a safety agent caught her husband taking photographs of girls’s crotches in a grocery store, main investigators to go looking Dominique Pélicot’s telephone and laptop. They discovered hundreds of pictures and movies of males showing to rape Gisèle of their house whereas she seems to be unconscious.
When cops referred to as her in for questioning, she initially informed them her husband was “a great guy.” But after being confronted with the unfathomable — police showed her some of the images — she left her husband.
“For me, everything collapses”
“For me, everything collapses,” she testified. “These are scenes of barbarity, of rape.”
She left with two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together.” Since then, she said, “I no longer have an identity. … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself.”
Police investigators found communications Dominique Pélicot allegedly sent on a messaging website commonly used by criminals, in which he invited men to sexually abuse his wife. French authorities shut down the website earlier this year.
Crude details of the alleged abuses, which investigators said began in 2011, and of the elaborate system Pélicot put into place over 10 years have emerged during the trial.
Dominique Pélicot told investigators that men invited to the couple’s home had to follow certain rules — they could not talk loudly, had to remove their clothes in the kitchen, could not wear perfume nor smell of tobacco.
They sometimes had to wait up to an hour and a half in a nearby parking lot for the drug to take full effect and render Gisèle Pélicot unconscious.
The victim allegedly was given a “cocktail” of drugs
The toxicologist on Thursday spoke of a “cocktail” of medication, a mixture of Temesta and Zolpidem, hypnotic and anxiolytic drugs. A medical expert said that the alleged rapists were not made to wear condoms and that Gisèle Pélicot had contracted four sexually transmitted infections.
“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” Gisèle Pélicot testified. “They regarded me like a rag doll, like a rubbish bag.”
As a result of Dominique Pélicot videotaped the alleged rapes, police have been capable of monitor down — over a interval of two years — a majority of the 72 suspects they have been in search of.
Apart from Pélicot, 50 different males, aged 22 to 70, are standing trial. A number of defendants are denying among the accusations in opposition to them, alleging they have been manipulated by Pélicot.
Questioned in court docket, Gisèle Pélicot rejected the argument that any of those males have been manipulated or trapped.
“These men entered my home, respected the imposed protocol. They did not rape me with a gun to the head. They raped me in all conscience,” she mentioned. “Why didn’t they go to the police station? Even an anonymous phone call could have saved my life.”
Over the next few months, the defendants will appear in small groups before a panel of five judges, with Pélicot scheduled to speak next week. Psychologists, psychiatrists and computer experts will also testify.
Outside the courthouse, Gisèle Pélicot told reporters she had tried to answer lawyers’ questions as best she could, despite the pressure of having all these “people” behind her.
“We will have to fight until the end.”
