Written by Shazrina Sofia
Edited by Izyan Nazihah
Gisèle Pélicot walks out of a courtroom with her lawyers | Credit: Simon Ashton/Daily Mail UK
FRANCE, 11th September 2024: 71-year-old Gisèle Pélicot (who will be referred to as Ms Pélicot onwards) has recently opened her trial to the public, intending to seek justice from her now-ex-husband, who has confessed to enlisting over 72 strangers to rape her around 100 times.
Her now ex-husband, Dominique Pélicot’s (who will be referred to as Monsieur Pélicot onwards) crimes were brought to light in November 2020 when he was caught upskirting women at a supermarket—this incident drove investigators to confiscate his devices, wherein they discovered a folder named abuse on his computer.
In the folder, the investigators found 20,000 photographs and videos of Ms Pélicot being raped repeatedly by over 72 men from 2011 to 2020—their ages ranging from 26 to 73—many of whom lived in the same town as Ms and Monsieur Pélicot. Ms Pélicot became the involuntary victim of their assault, as Monsieur Pélicot had drugged her with sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication.
Monsieur Pélicot has always admitted that he was guilty of the crime throughout the trials, claiming that he “put her (Ms Pélicot) to sleep, offered her, and filmed her”.
As of now, the investigators have drawn up a list of 72 suspects and managed to identify 51 of them, who are all currently standing on trial. 18 of the suspects are in custody, including Monsieur Pélicot—most of them will face 20 years in jail if found guilty.
As a result of the continued assault, Ms Pélicot struggled with lapses in her memory, hair loss, and weight loss. Further investigations reveal that she also had been infected with several sexually transmitted infections.
Ms Pélicot described her harrowing experience with composure: “I was sacrificed on the altar of vice. They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag. When you see that woman drugged, mistreated, a dead person on a bed—of course the body is not cold, it’s warm, but it’s as if I’m dead.”
Monsieur and Ms Pélicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, was also a victim of Monsieur Pélicot’s crime; Darian was drugged and had unsolicited photographs of her taken by Monsieur Pélicot, and she wrote a book entitled Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler papa (And I stopped calling you dad) in 2022 regarding her own experience.
The public trial is expected to last four months, up until 20th December. Despite having the right to keep the legal proceedings private, Ms Pélicot opted for the public trial, stating, “When other women, if they wake up with no memory, they might remember the testimony of Ms Pélicot. No woman should suffer from being drugged and victimised.” — TBC
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