Gisèle Pelicot’s children have described their “devastation” to learn that their father had drugged their mother and invited dozens of men to rape her, begging him in court to tell the truth about whether he had abused other members of the family.
David Pelicot, 50, the couple’s oldest son, told the court in Avignon on Monday that he believed his sister Caroline Darian, 45, when she said she felt certain that she too had been drugged and abused by Dominique Pelicot, after photos were found on his computer of her asleep in bed in underwear that she did not recognise as her own.
Turning to his father who sat looking on, emotionless, in the glass-fronted dock, David Pelicot said: “If you have any little bit of humanity left, tell the truth on what you did to my sister, who is still suffering every day and will suffer all her life.”
Dominique Pelicot shouted that he had never abused his daughter or any of his grandchildren. He asked for forgiveness from his son, who replied: “Never.”
Dominique Pelicot, a retired estate agent, is accused of drugging Gisèle Pelicot by crushing sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication into her food and drink, then inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020 in the village of Mazan in Provence.
The 71-year-old, who kept hundreds of videos of rape on his computer in a file entitled “abuse”, has admitted the charges, telling the court: “I am a rapist.” A total of 51 men are on trial with him. Some admit rape but others have said they did not know Gisèle Pelicot was drugged despite video evidence showing her unconscious and snoring loudly.
Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a former logistics manager, has become a feminist hero after insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and the other men be held in public to raise awareness of the use of drugs and sedation to rape women. “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them,” she has said.
On Monday David Pelicot, a sales manager from outside Paris, told the court he and his family’s “lives were destroyed” when investigators found video evidence of multiple rapes of his mother following Dominique Pelicot’s arrest for filming up the skirts of women in a supermarket in Carpentras.
He said he felt “the ground was pulled from under my feet” and that he had repeatedly vomited when he was told. He then travelled with his siblings to empty the house where his parents had lived during the abuse, calling it the “house of horror”. He and his siblings, he said, had noticed his mother’s apparent “absences” in conversations and thought she had Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour. “I thought I’d lose her,” he said.
Dominique Pelicot is also on trial for taking photographs of his adult daughter, Darian, as well as his son’s wives, when they were naked without their knowledge. The photographs of the sons’ wives, discovered during the investigation, are alleged to have been taken with hidden cameras in bathrooms and other rooms.
David Pelicot said his own wife had been photographed naked, including while pregnant. Turning to his father, he said: “When I discovered that my wife, when pregnant with twins, was photographed – and I don’t know how many photographs – I want to ask: ‘How could you do such a thing?’ I keep asking myself why, what was the aim? I can’t answer that question. But what I understand is that man went up the scale of fantasies with a violence that he always had in him.”
The court heard that an investigation was taking place into whether Dominique Pelicot may have abused any of his grandchildren. Pelicot repeated that he had not done so.
Darian told the court: “I know I was sedated. It’s not a supposition, it’s a reality. I know it.” She said the only difference between her and her mother was that there was “tangible” and “inescapable” evidence in her mother’s abuse. She said she had created a foundation to raise awareness on drugging and rape so that French society could face the issue and victims could have a voice. She said she felt “invisible and forgotten” in the case.
David Pelicot said it was important the trial raised awareness about drugging and abuse in society. He said: “My sister is fighting a battle, the hardest battle of her life, and we’ll always be there for her. I’d like to say to all women who are mothers, and all girls … as they start their life as young women, please, please don’t be afraid to speak out. The omertà is over. We have to speak out.”
Florian Pelicot, 38, the couple’s youngest son, an actor, said in court: “Learning that my father is one of the biggest criminals of the last 20 years – how do you rebuild from that?” Turning to his father, he said: “You always said our mother was a saint, but you were the devil in person.”
He said that, looking back, there had been suspicious moments, for example his father answering his mother’s phone when he called. He said that on one summer holiday, during a dinner with a glass of rosé, “I saw my mother switch off, I felt she was no longer with us – she was completely groggy, staring ahead … I said, ‘Mum are you OK? Dad, is there a problem?’ He got up fast and said ‘I’ll put her to bed’. We went home. But imagine if I had forgotten something and gone back to the house, what I would have found? He had planned to do to her what we now know he did.”
He said he had noticed Dominique Pelicot had been “ill at ease” and “sweating” if he went on his computer to print out colouring pictures for his children.
Florian Pelicot said that when his now ex-wife, Aurore, had heard Dominique Pelicot make a comment to one of his grandchildren about “playing doctors”, he wished he had spoken out about it.
Aurore, who was also photographed naked by Dominique Pelicot using hidden cameras, told the court she had been abused by her grandfather, a gendarme, as a child and understood the importance of this trial. “What I want to say today is to ask the question: how did we get to this situation? How can human beings do such things?”
