In September 2024, Dominique Pélicot, a 71-year-old man from Mazan in south-eastern France, testified in court that he repeatedly drugged his wife, raped her, and invited strangers to rape her while she was unconscious.[1] Over a period of nine years, from July 2011 to October 2020, Gisèle Pélicot, who was unaware of the abuse being perpetrated against her, was raped 92 times by 72 men, as her husband filmed the abuse. The abuse came to light only in September 2020 when Dominique Pélicot was arrested for taking upskirt photographs of women in a supermarket, and police thereafter discovered thousands of images and videos that Pélicot had taken of the rapes and stored on his computing equipment. Pélicot is also accused of training Jean-Pierre Maréchal to drug and rape his own wife. The trial in Avignon of Dominique Pélicot and 50 other men accused of the rapes began on 2 September 2024, and is scheduled to conclude in mid-December.
  Mazan Villiers-sur-Marne Drôme Villeparisis Mazan rapes (France) | |
| Native name | Viols de Mazan |
|---|---|
| Date | July 2011 – October 2020 |
| Location |
|
| Also known as | Pélicot case |
| Type | Rape |
| Non-fatal injuries |
|
| Accused |
|
| Charges | Aggravated rape |
Background
editDominique Pélicot was born on 27 November 1952 in Quincy-sous-Sénart in the Essonne region of northern France.[2] After school he had an apprenticeship with an electrician, and pursued a career in the field.[3] He was then a real estate agent, before becoming a technical sales agent of fire alarms and computer equipment.[3]
It was during this time he met Gisèle in 1971, and they married in April 1973 in Azay-le-Ferron, Indre.[2][3] They had two sons and a daughter, and lived in the Paris suburb of Villiers-sur-Marne.[2][3][4][5]
Dominique Pélicot worked for Électricité de France (EDF) for many years.[2][6] Gisèle Pélicot was a business manager at EDF.[4] Pélicot lived beyond his means and got into debt – his older brother Thierry lent him €75,000, which was never repaid.[3] His electrical research company went bankrupt in 2001.[3] The couple divorced in order to protect their assets from Pélicot's creditors, but remarried on 11 July 2007.[3]
Dominique was arrested in 2010 for upskirting female customers at a Carrefour supermarket in Collégien, Seine-et-Marne.[7] He was fined €100, but his wife was not informed about the incident.[8]
The Pélicots retired to Mazan, Vaucluse, a small town north-east of Avignon, in south-eastern France, in March 2013.[4][9] Their three children and seven grandchildren regularly holidayed with them at their rented home in Mazan.[9]
Arrest and investigation
editDominique Pélicot was arrested on 12 September 2020 after he had been apprehended by a security guard for upskirting three female customers using his mobile phone at an E.Leclerc supermarket in Carpentras, Vaucluse.[10][4][11] A camcorder, camera and condoms were found in his bag.[3] During his interrogation at an Avignon police station, Pélicot claimed that he did not usually do this kind of thing and that he had been overcome by urges as his wife had been away from home for a month.[3] He was released on bail pending investigation of his two mobile phones, laptop, and other digital equipment that had been seized at his home.[3][9]
Investigation of Pélicot's seized equipment showed that he had been a part of a private chatroom called à son insu ("without her knowledge"), hosted on the Coco.gg website, in which members discussed performing sexual acts on their partners without the latter's consent, often after administering drugs to them.[4][12][13] The website, which was registered in Guernsey, was owned by Bulgarian company Vinci SA (not related to the French concessions and construction company) and operated by Isaac Steidel.[12] The website was connected to more than 23,000 French criminal cases from 2021 to 2024, and was shut down in June 2024.[9] In the chats Pélicot invited other men to rape his wife and to watch videos of the rapes afterwards.[11] Skype messages were also found in which he boasted of drugging his wife and inviting strangers to rape his unconscious wife.[9]
On a USB stick connected to Pélicot's computer, investigators found a folder called ABUS ("ABUSE") containing more than 20,000 images and videos of the rapes.[9][11][14] Gisèle was listless and unconscious in them.[3] The media had been meticulously filed by Dominique with explicit titles, such as ABUS / nuit du 26 mai 2020 avec Marc Sodo 5e fois ("ABUSE / night of 26 May 2020 with Marc Sodomy 5th time"), which gave the dates, names of the perpetrators, and nature of the acts.[3] This allowed the investigators to identify 92 separate rapes committed against Gisèle by 72 different men between July 2011 to October 2020.[15] It took the police two years to identify and locate most of the perpetrators.[9] Only 50 of the rapists were identified.[15] The offenders were aged between 21 and 68 at the time of the rapes.[11][16]
Photographs were also found of Pélicot's two daughters-in-law in the shower, which had been taken without their consent, and had been shared online.[3][11] Two photos were found of his daughter Caroline Darian when she was around 30 years old, listless on a bed as if she had been anaesthetised, and dressed in her mother's underwear.[3][11] Pélicot has never admitted to abusing Caroline.[3]
Re-arrest and confession
edit
On 2 November 2020, Dominique and Gisèle Pélicot were called by the police to attend an interview.[8][17] The police questioned Gisèle about their sex life and she told them they never indulged in wife swapping or threesomes.[17] She was shown a photograph, but she did not recognise the man and woman "asleep" in the photo. The officer asked if the bed and table in the photo belonged to the Pélicots but Gisèle still did not recognise herself. But when a second photograph was shown to her she finally understood what had been happening to her. She had been raped around 200 times between 2011 and 2020, initially in Paris and later in Mazan.[8][17] Her "world fell apart".[17]
Dominique Pélicot was re-arrested on 2 November 2020 and charged with aggravated rape, drugging, and numerous other sexual offences.[9][11][14] He was also accused of violating the privacy of his wife, daughter, and two daughters-in-law by illegally recording, and occasionally distributing, intimate photos of them.[9] Pélicot has admitted his guilt.[9][14]
He also admitted to getting satisfaction from watching other men abuse his wife.[17]
According to Pélicot, the abuse started after his wife had been prescribed lorazepam (Temesta), an anxiolytic drug, which caused her to be drowsy. He took advantage of this by secretly adding Temesta to his wife's meals and drinks, causing her to lose consciousness which allowed him to commit sexual acts, such as anal sex, which his wife had refused. He would film the abuse, sometimes committed after he had taken Viagra, and share what he had filmed online. He would invite strangers from the internet to watch him abusing his wife, and on other occasions he would "offer" his wife to others to abuse.[11] Dominique eventually started to obtain pills from his own doctor to use on his wife – according to the Primary Health Insurance Fund, Pélicot had been prescribed 450 anxiolytic pills in one year alone.[3][14]
Each rape followed a similar routine – Dominique would ask the perpetrator to park away from the house so as not to be noticed, and to wait up to an hour for the pills administered to Gisèle to take effect. They would be asked to not wear perfumes or smoke beforehand, as Gisèle had a keen sense of smell. The perpetrators would be asked to undress in the kitchen or living room so as not to leave anything behind in the bedroom, and to warm their hands on the radiator or with hot water so as not to wake Gisèle.[3][17] Pélicot would demand that the perpetrators not wear condoms.[18] One of the perpetrators was HIV positive and was responsible for six of the rapes.[18][19] As a result, Gisèle was found to have contracted four sexually transmitted infections,[8][18] although she did not contract HIV or hepatitis B and C.[20] After the abuse, Pélicot would clean his wife's body.[9][11] No money was exchanged between Pélicot and the other perpetrators.[11][17] Dominique is said to have had homosexual relations with some of the accused, whilst others provided the drugs used to sedate Gisèle.[3]
The rapes took a huge toll on Gisèle's health. She had been losing her hair and lost almost 16 kilograms (35 lb) in weight.[3][9] During her final years in Paris, she began experiencing memory loss, leading her children and friends to fear that she had Alzheimer's.[3][4] One of the main effects of lorazepam is to interfere with memory formation.[21] The drug can induce a potent amnesia that lasts for several hours.[22] The memory loss and fatigue intensified after she moved to Mazan.[4] On one occasion she woke up with a haircut she could not remember getting. She went to her hairdresser who told her that she had her hair cut the previous day.[4][14] She had also complained of pain in her cervix.[23] Gisèle sought medical advice many times, but was always accompanied by Dominique Pélicot who claimed that her symptoms were due to overwork she experienced whilst caring for their grandchildren in Paris.[4][14] None of the doctors suspected that the symptoms were caused by the abuse that Pélicot had been secretly inflicting on his wife.[4][9] After learning of the abuse, Gisèle left the marital home with just two suitcases.[24] She divorced her husband and changed her surname.[9][25]
Despite admitting his guilt and referring to himself as a rapist during his trial,[26][27][28] Pélicot on one occasion stated that he did not believe he did anything wrong and claimed that he saved his wife from suffering by drugging her. He told a personality investigator (enquêteur de personnalité) appointed by the examining magistrate that he had been raped by a male nurse at the age of 9 whilst receiving treatment at a clinic for a head injury inflicted by his brother. However, according to his brother Thierry, their mother made inquiries at the clinic and found that there were no male nurses on duty at the time Pélicot claimed he had been raped. Thierry has said he does not believe his brother's claim. Pélicot also told the personality investigator that his father had been violent to his mother but according to Thierry that whilst their parents had arguments, the only violence he witnessed was when his father slapped his mother once or twice. Pélicot also claimed that his career ambitions had been constrained because his parents invested all their savings in his brother's medical studies, a claim denied by Thierry, who said his studies were paid for by a scholarship.[3]
The Pélicots' daughter Caroline Darian published a 2022 book about the case titled Et j'ai cessé de t'appeler Papa : Quand la soumission chimique frappe une famille (And I Stopped Calling You Dad: When Chemical Submission Strikes a Family).[29][30] She also established a non-profit organisation called M'endors Pas (Don't Put Me to Sleep) to publicise the dangers of drug-facilitated crimes.[31][32] She filed a civil suit against her father.[23]
Clone rapes
editIn addition to the abuse of his wife, Pélicot is accused of training Jean-Pierre Maréchal to perpetrate the same abuse against his own wife.[33] Between 2015 and 2020, Pélicot regularly travelled to Maréchal's home in Drôme to "train" him.[4][33] Pélicot would supervise Maréchal who agreed to "hand over" his wife to Pélicot.[33] Pélicot and Maréchal are accused of raping Maréchal's wife 10 times.[4][33] Jean-Pierre Maréchal has not been charged with raping Gisèle Pélicot.[9][34][35]
Indictment and trial
editOn 19 June 2023, Gwenola Journot, an investigating judge from the Avignon judicial court, published a 370-page report indicting 51 men for rape.[36][37] A 52nd suspect died of cancer before being arrested.[37][38]
The accused range in age from 25 to 72 and come from numerous walks of life – firefighter, IT expert, journalist, nurse, plumber, prison guard, and truck driver.[3][9] Many have partners and children, and 41 are from Vaucluse.[9][39] Most are charged with one count of rape, but a few with multiple offences, including one who is charged with six counts of rape.[9] Five of the men are also charged with possessing images of child sexual abuse.[9] Eighteen of the accused are currently detained (16 in respect of this case and two in respect of the other cases) and 33 are free but under judicial supervision.[11][39] The accused face imprisonment of up to 20 years if found guilty.[40][41]
Some of the accused have admitted their guilt, whilst others claim that the acts were consensual or that Gisèle was pretending to be asleep or agreed to be drugged.[4][9][11] Some have claimed that they had Dominique Pélicot's permission which was sufficient.[9] Twelve of the accused appealed their indictment but on 5 October 2023 the Court of Appeal in Nîmes rejected the appeal.[42][43]
The trial of Dominique Pélicot, Jean-Pierre Maréchal and 49 other defendants at the Judicial Court in Avignon began on 2 September 2024 and is expected to last until 20 December 2024.[39][44] The prosecutor and several defence lawyers requested that the trial be held in private, but Gisèle Pélicot opposed this and requested, through her lawyer, that it be held in public so that everyone knows what she experienced.[14][45] After deliberation by the five professional magistrates, presiding judge Roger Arata announced that the trial would be in public.[14][45]
During the trial, Dominique Pélicot was hospitalized with a kidney infection and kidney stones, but gave evidence from the stand in which he admitted all the charges against him.[46][47][48]
On 23 October 2024, Gisèle Pelicot testified how her former husband drugged and raped her by putting sleeping pills in ice cream. [49][50]
Protests
editOn 14 September 2024, feminist organisations arranged protests in 30 areas throughout France to express solidarity with Gisèle and other victims of sexual violence, with 700 demonstrators at the Place de la Republique in Paris and 200 at the Palais de Justice in Marseille.[51][52] [53]
In October 2024, protests across Paris, Lyon, and beyond have rallied around Gisèle Pélicot, who bravely faced her alleged abusers in a high-profile trial. Her determination to speak out has galvanized public support and highlighted the need for stronger measures against sexual violence in France.[54]
Related cases
editDominique Pélicot has been implicated in two other crimes. On 4 December 1991, 23-year-old real estate agent Sophie Narme was found dead, naked and face down on the carpet of an apartment that she was supposed to be showing a client in the 19th arrondissement of Paris.[55][56] She had been raped before being strangled with a belt.[55] Police initially linked the case to serial killer Michel Fourniret, before attributing it to an elusive sex criminal nicknamed "Le Grêlé".[55] The case remained cold for 30 years until similarities were noticed with the Mazan rapes. On 14 October 2022, Dominique was charged with the rape and murder of Sophie Narme, a charge that he denies.[55][57]
On 11 May 1999, a man attempted to rape 19-year-old real estate agent Estella B. as she was showing him an apartment in Villeparisis, Seine-et-Marne, in the suburbs of Paris, but the victim managed to escape after fighting back.[7][14] After Pélicot was arrested in Collégien in 2010, his DNA was found to match DNA that had been found on Estella B.'s shoes in 1999.[7] The police failed to pursue the matter, and Pélicot was able to continue his crime spree.[7] After being arrested in 2020, Pélicot's DNA was once again matched to that from the Villeparisis case and, after initially denying his involvement, Pélicot admitted to the attempted rape of Estella B.[9][57]
See also
editReferences
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