French officials discovered twisted Dominique Pélicot was behind the mass rape of his own wife after he was arrested for other sick crimes.
Dubbed the ‘Monster of Avignon’, Pelicot has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after he was found guilty of drugging and raping his wife while allowing a multitude of others to do so, reports the Mirror.
The rapist admitted how he repeatedly drugged his wife of 50 years over the course of almost a decade and invited dozens of other men – whom he recruited online – to assault her aswell.
All 50 men were found guilty of charges varying from sexual assault to rape and attempted rape. Out of 83 men involved, 51 – aged between 26 and 73 – were jailed for a total of 400 years after they were found guilty of charges including aggravated rape, sexual assault and possessing indecent images of children.
Pélicot sedated his wife by adding tablets of a powerful anxiolytic drug into her dinner. He then invited men he’d found on an online forum into the couple’s bedroom.
The 72-year-old was allegedly raped 92 times at their family home in Mazan, a commune in Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France. A panel of five judges in France delivered their verdicts for more than 50 men charged with the aggravated rape and sexual assault of Gisele Pelicot in a case that shocked the world – before handing out a collective total of 400 years jail time to 50 other defendants.
The sexual abuse, known to be part of the dark world of so-called ‘chemical submission’ – was videoed and stored on a USB drive, saved under the name ‘Abuses’. However, he first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him surreptitiously filming up women’s skirts.
Police went on to find a library of homemade images documenting years of abuse inflicted on his wife – more than 20,000 photos and videos in all, stored on computer drives and catalogued in folders marked “abuse,” “her rapists,” “night alone” and other titles.
Before the abuse came to light, Ms Pelicot was tested for Alzheimer’s and brain tumours in an attempt to find the cause of the mysterious blackouts she suffered – yet, doctors failed to identify the years of drugging and sexual assaults.
In late November, the government announced measures to ensure potential victims have better access to testing for the presence of drugs in their system, pushed in part by advocacy work by Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter.
Rapists involved in the case include civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers. One fireman wore his uniform during the attack, a video shows.
Today, her former husband Pelicot was the first to receive a sentence for aggravated rape and was also found guilty of the attempted aggravated rape of the wife of one of the co-accused Jean Pierre Marechal, Cillia, and taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine.
Presiding Judge Roger Arata previously announced in March that Ms Pélicot would be granted her wish for ‘full publicity’. “Proceedings will be public,” said the judge, who is president of a bench composed of five professional magistrates.
Ms Pélicot’s lawyer, Antoine Camus, said: “She could have opted for a closed trial, but that’s what her attackers would have wanted.” Despite this, it would be a “horrible ordeal”, said Mr Camus, adding: “For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years.”
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