A 71-year-old French man accused of drugging his wife so that he and dozens of strangers could sexually assault her at her home has told a court that he admitted the charges and was a rapist.
“I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” Dominique Pélicot said, quietly and calmly, as he looked across the courtroom at the 50 other men who are also on trial accused of raping his wife in her own bed while she was drugged and in a state akin to a “deep coma”.
Pélicot, a retired estate agent, is accused of drugging Gisèle Pélicot with sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication, then recruiting dozens of men online to allegedly rape her in the couple’s home in a southern French village between 2011 and 2020.
Giving evidence for the first time after several days of ill health, Pélicot said of the other accused men, aged between 26 and 74: “They all knew.” He said they were aware they were being invited to rape his wife.
“I am guilty of what I did,” he said. “I say to my wife, my children, my grandchildren … I regret what I’ve done and I ask for forgiveness, even if it’s unforgivable.” Of his wife, to whom he was married for 50 years but who has now divorced him, he said: “She did not deserve this.”
He also apologised to the wife of another man who he allegedly raped at her home when she was drugged.
Dressed in a grey cardigan over a blue T-shirt, with white hair and a heavily lined face, Pélicot was brought in from his prison cell and sat confidently in the secure glass box for interrogation, staring straight at the five judges in the Avignon criminal court. At times he sighed with irritation when asked if the men who allegedly raped his wife had known she could not have consented. Sometimes he cried when talking of alleged sexual abuse in his own childhood.
The court heard how Pélicot would tell men clearly in private messages online: “I’m looking for someone to abuse my wife asleep.” He wrote to one man online: “You’re like me, you like rape mode.”
The judge told the court that Pélicot had told investigators that, when drugged, his wife would be unconscious for around seven hours and he would tell the men who he had allegedly invited to the house: “Help yourself.” He had strict rules – the men undressed in the kitchen, had to not smoke or wear perfume and had to warm their hands first to avoid waking her.
Pélicot said the men had known they were being filmed “because there was a tripod and camera. Everyone could see it when they came in to the room.”
As he spoke, some of the accused men sniggered or shook their heads.
Asked if his wife could have consented, Pélicot said: “Not at all, it was always against her knowledge.” He said he drugged his wife two to three times a week, raping her each time himself. This was more often than the images on his hard drive indicated, the judges remarked.
The court heard how expert psychiatric reports had found Pélicot to be a manipulator with low empathy and low ability for introspection or taking responsibility. He lacked the ability to take other people’s feelings into account. He was described as a man who had very few friends and liked to show off his convertible car.
He told the court that the assaults of his wife were an addiction. He said: “I had an addiction; I had needs. I put everything on the line without thinking. I was selfish and I’m ashamed.”
Pélicot agreed with a judge that the abuse of his wife had been “an integral part of his life”. He repeatedly told the court: “You aren’t born a pervert, you become one.”
He said his actions were connected to abuse he suffered as a child. The lead judge told the court of a violent father and “family sexual abuse and family secrets”. Pélicot said he was raped aged nine in hospital by a nurse when he was being treated for a head injury. He said that aged 14, as an apprentice on a building site, he witnessed – and was forced to take part in – a group-rape of a woman who he described as disabled. “It was too heavy to bear,” he told the court.
The court heard that Gisèle Pélicot was not aware of the abuse that happened when she was unconscious, but had suffered inexplicable memory loss and gynaecological problems. Dominique Pélicot, who regularly crushed medication into her food, had sought to “reassure her” when she feared an onset of Alzheimer’s, taking her for medical tests, it heard. She was informed by police of the alleged rapes after her husband was arrested for allegedly filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020 and investigators found images of the alleged abuse of his wife on his computer hard drive.
Pélicot was asked about the grave danger he had put his wife in, including the fact she was allegedly raped six times at his instigation by a man who had HIV and did not use protection. He said: “For the HIV, it was someone who gave me a false test … I should have reacted to all that. I wasn’t conscious of putting her in danger.”
But he said he himself had an HIV test in 2019 as he was concerned for his own health. He did not make the men who came to the house wear condoms.
The court heard that Gisèle Pélicot now lives with lifelong consequences of the sexually transmitted diseases she contracted during the alleged attacks. Asked if he hated his wife, Pélicot said: “Not at all. What I did was abominable but I never had hatred towards her.” Asked if he loved his wife, he said: “I was crazy about her … I loved her enormously. I ruined everything”.
Pélicot was asked about photos found on his hard drive of his adult daughter asleep in her underwear. He repeatedly said: “I never touched my daughter,” and denied taking photos of her. “You’re lying,” his daughter shouted in court. Last week, she told the court she believed her father had drugged her.
The court heard that Pélicot had allegedly filmed the wives of his two sons by placing a hidden camera in bathrooms they used.
Gisèle Pélicot told the court: “For me, it’s difficult to listen to Mr Pélicot because in 50 years, I never imagined for a second that he could rape. It’s difficult for me to hear this today … the acts of violence and barbarity. I didn’t think for a second he could do it. I had full trust in that man.”
Dominique Pélicot’s testimony will be decisive for the 50 other men who are on trial. Some of the accused have admitted he told them he was drugging his then wife, while others claim they believed they were participating in a couple’s organised scenario.
The case has prompted outrage across France. Gisèle Pélicot requested that the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse. Women applauded her as she exited the Avignon courtroom on Tuesday and she put her hands together in thanks for their support.
