A woman whose husband drugged her for years and invited dozens of men to rape her as he filmed the assaults told a French court Thursday she was a “heap of ruins” since learning about the abuse.
Gisèle Pélicot took the stand on the fourth day of the trial of her husband, Dominique Pélicot, to describe the horror of learning that she had been violated for nearly 10 years by at least 83 men.
Those included firefighters, masons, gardeners, prison guards, soldiers and journalists. They ranged in age from 26 to 73 at the time of their arrest.
“It’s unbearable,” she testified. “I have so much to say that I don’t always know where to start.”
But start she did, detailing the aftermath to the court in Avignon in the south of France.
“I thought we were a close couple,” Gisele Pelicot, 72, told the court of the moment she was told of the photos and videos on her husband’s devices. “My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart. Everything I had built up over 50 years.”
Dominique Pélicot, 71, was found out in 2020 after police searched their home when he was investigated for taking photos up women’s skirts in a grocery store. There they discovered more than 20,000 videos and photographs of his unconscious wife being assaulted, going as far back as 2011.
Gisèle had been having memory lapses that made her wonder if she had Alzheimer’s disease, completely unaware that her husband had been crushing tranquilizers and sleeping pills into her food and drink.
“For me, everything collapsed,” she said. “These are scenes of barbarity, of rape.”
At the same time, “the police saved my life by investigating Mr. Pélicot’s computer,” Gisèle said, according to People.
She has opted to make the trial and her identity public so as to draw attention to the issue of drugging and raping women, in hopes of preventing other such crimes.
“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” Gisèle said. “They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.”
Police said Dominique Pélicot invited 83 men to commit a total of 92 rapes, according to The Times of London. Investigators tracked down 50 of the suspects, who are also on trial alongside Pélicot.