from our special correspondent in Avignon – The trial of 51 men for the rape of Gisèle Pelicot began in earnest on Thursday as the first defendants took the stand. Their testimony included expressions of regret along with more ambiguous statements regarding their awareness of their victim’s vulnerable state. The recurring question was how the accused could not have been aware of a sleeping woman's lack of consent.
Warning: The following account of courtroom testimony includes descriptions of sexual assault that may be upsetting to some readers.
The next few weeks promise to be an ordeal for those in the Avignon courtroom where 51 men are accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot between 2011 and 2020 while she was unconscious after being drugged by her husband.
Flanked by her two lawyers, wearing thick sunglasses and accompanied by her eldest daughter Caroline Darian, Gisèle Pelicot will face her rapists for several weeks. They know her face, having been invited to rape her by her husband, Dominique Pelicot. But she herself is seeing her abusers for the first time during this extraordinary trial, which is set to run until mid-December.
Read more‘I feel humiliated’: Gisèle Pelicot outraged by suggestions of complicity at France mass rape trial
On Thursday morning, a man identified only as Lionel R., 44 years old, with a deep voice and black shirt and trousers, took the witness stand before presiding judge Roger Arata.
A father of three children and a former alcoholic, he testified how he had been approached by Dominique Pelicot on the online dating site Coco.fr. “He tells me that he's in a relationship, he makes me a rather unusual proposal to have sex with his wife, he tells me that she'll be asleep, talks to me about sleeping pills, tells me that she takes them or that he gives them to her, it's not clear. I'm not asking too many questions, I was convinced it was a game at the time.”
In denial
On December 2, 2018, Lionel R. visited Dominique Pelicot's home in Mazan, near Avignon. His host made him undress in the living room, then took him into the couple's bedroom where he discovered Gisèle Pelicot, asleep and completely naked.
Half an hour of rape followed under the watchful eye of Dominique Pelicot, who filmed the scene and whispered instructions to avoid waking his wife.
“At one point, she moved and he asked me to leave the room. That's when I came to my senses a little. I realised that there was a big problem in that she mustn't wake up in front of me. I should have left and reacted much sooner, but I wasn't able to at the time,” the defendant told the panel of judges.
Was he aware that he was committing a rape, he was asked?
“I never intended to do it, but as I never had Gisèle Pelicot's consent, I can only say that...” He didn't finish his sentence.
Even after Dominique Pelicot's arrest in September 2020, Lionel R. continued to be in denial. “One morning, I saw an article about a man arrested for filming under women’s skirts,” he says. "At first I made the connection, but then quite quickly I said to myself that it couldn't be my story [...] I couldn't be part of such a sordid affair. I was in denial.”
‘I thought about reporting it’
Jacques C., 74, a divorced father of two practicing a "libertine" lifestyle, also met Dominique Pelicot on the Coco.fr dating site.
A few hours after they first exchanged messages on February 24, 2020, Pelicot invited Jacques C. to his home to fondle his wife, who had been sedated with sleeping pills.
Jacques C. says he was not surprised to discover Gisèle Pelicot unresponsive in her bed: “I had this idea of a promiscuous couple, where the wife might be asleep, perhaps because she was a shy person,” he explains in the witness box.
He then describes the scene at the Pelicot home: “I arrive, Mr Pelicot is naked... and he asks me to undress in the living room. When he took me into the bedroom, I sensed that things weren't quite as I thought they would be [...] He encouraged me to caress her, whispering. I do it, and I notice that there's no reaction.”
Jacques C. performed cunnilingus on the victim, who was not conscious but eventually became agitated in her sleep. “Dominique asked me to leave the room, which was a relief for me, so I got dressed. When he came back I told him I did not want to be there.”
Once out of the house, the accused had a moment of lucidity: “When I crossed the garden, I thought about reporting the incident. Then life resumed its course; the next day I went to work very early, and that was that.”
‘He's repented, but perhaps it's a little late’
Jacques C. was described as having a “generous” personality as a former a fireman and member of Les Restaurants du Coeur, a French food distribution charity.
One judge asked Jacques C. to explain a contradiction: If Jacques C. claimed to put his partners' sexual pleasure first, why did he go into the bedroom of a woman who was asleep and therefore “incapable of expressing consent”?
In the dock, Dominique Pelicot never misses a beat during the verbal exchanges.
Regularly questioned about the statements made by his accomplices, he does not hesitate to pull apart their apologies or even to give a completely different version of their testimony.
Concerning Lionel R., Pelicot says caustically: “He's repented, but it's perhaps a little late. He didn't give me the impression that he was turned off during the act [and] he was careful not to let slip that he had asked me how I had drugged my wife.”
Pelicot, who is facing 20 years in prison, gave the impression that he wanted to drag as many of the other defendants down with him as possible.
A defence lawyer had asked him the previous day if the only thing Pelicot still shared with Gisèle, now his ex-wife, was 50 “common enemies”, the defendants accused of abusing her.
Pelicot replied enigmatically: “I hope not – that's not what I remember about her, anyway.”
This article was adapted from the original in French.
