Scandal: In France, Dominique Pelicot, a 71-year-old man is on trial for having drugged and invited strangers to rape his own wife for almost ten years.

Article written by HAKIZIMANA Maurice

The husband of this sixty-year-old woman is suspected of having administered powerful anxiolytics to her. Unconscious, she was then raped by strangers, contacted on the internet by her husband. The events took place several times each year, for a decade. Around forty men were arrested in Vaucluse, Gard, Drôme, Bouches-du-Rhône and Dordogne, as confirmed by information from Le Parisien.

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A judicial police officer, in September 2021. (DENIS CHARLET / AFP)

Serial rapes for ten years

All are suspected of having participated in serial rapes of a woman in Vaucluse. For ten years, this sixty-year-old was drugged by her husband and delivered to strangers whom he contacted on the internet. Unconscious during this sexual violence, the victim does not remember the facts due to this “chemical submission”, says her lawyer. I will summarize for you what we know about this case.

Dominique Pélicot, “the rapist” the “monster of Mazan”

It’s been since 2010 and her husband was filming everything

The events lasted ten years. From 2010 to 2020, this man is suspected of having sexually subjected his wife to several dozen strangers, aged between 24 and 71. According to the first elements of the investigation, this retired craftsman, now aged 68, posted photos of his drugged and unconscious wife on the internet and organized the men’s visits to the couple’s house, in Mazan, in Vaucluse . The husband filmed all of the rapes of his sixty-year-old wife, Commissioner Jérémie Bosse Platière, of the Avignon judicial police, explained to AFP.

The husband used powerful anxiolytics that he slipped into his wife’s meals to drug her. “He placed her naked on the bed and overheated the room to prevent her from waking up,” the commissioner reported. The individuals then “quietly” entered the room and “whispered.” “If the victim moved an arm, they left,” according to Jérémie Bosse Platière. “It is rare to have so much evidence in a rape case.”Jérémie Bosse Platière, commissioner of the Avignon judicial police, told AFP around forty people involved in this case were identified during the investigation by the Avignon judicial police, initiated in November 2020 with the opening of a judicial investigation.

Drugged and unconscious, the victim “did not notice anything”

“Everything is characterized, even if the victim, unconscious during the rapes, does not remember anything,” explained the commissioner of the Avignon judicial police. The victim’s lawyer also assured my source that her client had no memory of the rapes she suffered over the past ten years. The sixty-year-old “didn’t notice anything,” says Caty Richard. The latter advances that her client was the victim of “chemical submission”. This is “the administration for criminal or misdemeanor purposes of psychoactive substances without the victim’s knowledge or under threat”, recalls the National Medicines Safety Agency in a report dated 2016 (in PDF) .

“No one can imagine, when we go to bed in our house, in our room, in our bed, that when we wake up the next morning we will have experienced things of which we will have no memory.” Caty Richard, victim's lawyer at franceinfo

Gisèle Pélicot,the victim

For the victim, “life stopped,” says the lawyer. “The world stopped spinning. Everything she believed in fell apart. It was a cataclysm. You have to imagine that it is the domain of the unspeakable, the unspeakable, the unthinkable, the inconceivable,” continues Caty Richard. The victim has since filed for divorce, moved and is undergoing psychotherapy, specifies France Bleu Vaucluse.

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How was the affair discovered?

It was a news item that occurred in September 2020 that led to the discovery of this affair. Surprised by a security guard, the husband was arrested in a store in Carpentras filming under the skirts of female customers. “The police were not content with his confession, they went further, they searched his home and took all his computer equipment,” explains lawyer Caty Richard. It was by viewing the contents of his computer seized from his home that investigators discovered videos showing his unconscious wife being raped by men. On the internet, they also found messages from the husband posted on libertine dating forums where he suggested people come and take advantage of his wife.

It was by viewing the contents of his computer seized from his home that investigators discovered videos showing his unconscious wife being raped by men.

Forty people indicted and imprisoned

For the moment, nine people are in police custody and 33 have been indicted and imprisoned, including the victim’s husband, declared Wednesday the Avignon public prosecutor, Philippe Guémas, reports France 3 Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur. 

The charges retained by the prosecution range from “rape” and “complicity in rape aggravated by the administration of a substance likely to impair the victim’s discernment”, to “attack on the privacy of privacy through the capture and dissemination of images of a sexual nature”. Many of the men involved started by denying it, evoking an exchange with a libertine swinging couple, before recognizing the facts in front of the video images, according to the commissioner of the Avignon judicial police. The lawyer for several arrested men believes that they “absolutely had no idea that they were going to commit an act that will be described as rape against them.” “They were certain that they were going to meet a swinging couple, thinking that the man and the woman were perfectly in agreement,” said Louis-Alain Lemaire, to France Bleu Vaucluse.

“They realized during the events that apparently this person was not consenting and that it was not a game. They stopped immediately.” -Louis-Alain Lemaire, lawyer for several men arrested at France Bleu Vaucluse. 

“There were some who were able to explain that they thought it was a fantasy, that she was pretending to sleep, but it is impossible to think that she was pretending to sleep when you see the images. We can clearly see that she is totally unconscious,” retorts the victim’s lawyer.

Béatrice Zavarro, lawyer for Dominique Pélicot(CHRISTOPHE SIMON / AFP)

Dominique Pelicot called himself a “rapist”

The sentence was expected since Dominique Pelicot, 71, has never hidden his responsibility. In mid-September, he called himself a “rapist” and said: “I am guilty of what I did […] I ruined everything, I lost everything. I have to pay.”

“The search for his pleasure is found in a desire to submit to his wife, to humiliate or even degrade through his actions, his words, the person he cherishes most in the world,” accused the assistant prosecutor.

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Twenty years in prison, the maximum sentence, required against Dominique Pelicot

“I am guilty of what I did […] I ruined everything, I lost everything. I have to pay”.

The maximum sentence required against Dominque Pelicot. Before the Vaucluse criminal court, the attorneys general requested the maximum sentence – 20 years of criminal imprisonment – ​​against Dominique Pelicot for his “despicable actions”, for having drugged, raped and had his wife raped by dozens of recruited men on the internet for a decade.

Second sentence of the day. The public prosecutor then requested 17 years of criminal imprisonment against Jean-Pierre M., prosecuted not for raping Gisèle Pelicot but for having raped and had his own wife raped, with the complicity of Dominique Pelicot. The latter had shared his method with him so that Jean-Pierre M. applied it to his own wife. In total, the two men had “around ten meetings over around ten years”, notes the general advocate, Jean-François Mayet, estimating that Jean-Pierre M. “had sufficient time to realize of what was at stake.”

An indictment over three days. “The challenge” of the Mazan rape trial “is to fundamentally change the relationships between men and women,” affirmed the public prosecutor in opening his indictment. The majority of them, prosecuted for aggravated rape, face up to twenty years of criminal imprisonment.

“We can no longer, in 2024, consider that because she said nothing, that she agreed.” The attorney general addressed the essence of the arguments put forward by the defendants, who notably claimed not to have understood that the victim did not consent. 

“There was nothing ambiguous, neither in the context, nor in the attitude of Gisèle Pelicot, which could lead these men to believe that she agreed to undergo these sexual acts in the lethargic state which was his,” says Laure Chabaud. And added: “We can no longer, in 2024, consider that because she said nothing, that she agreed.”

This world,

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