Husband who drugged wife let HIV-positive attacker rape her 6 times & told others don’t use protection in years of abuse

THE HUSBAND who allegedly drugged his wife and had dozens of men rape her let an HIV-positive attacker abuse her six times and told others not to wear protection.

Gisèle Pélicot, 71, has remained silent through the first three days of the heinous case in Avignon but has taken the stand today.

DR

Dominique P is accused of recruiting men online to assault his wife repeatedly over a 10-year period[/caption]

Wife Gisèle arriving at court today to take the standAFP

AFP

Gisele has allegedly been subjected to over a decade of sexual abuse[/caption]

Gisèle took the stand this morningAFP

The brave mum was seen arriving at court today before taking the stand in a trial that could last four months.

There will be “extremely difficult moments” for her as she testifies, said one of her lawyers Stephane Babonneau.

She takes the stand in the courtroom filled with the men accused of sexually assaulting her while she allegedly lay unconscious from being drugged.

Gisèle told the court about having to be tested for HIV as one of her alleged attackers who came to rape her “six times” was “seropositive”.

The grandmother said: “My life was in danger but not one second did anyone stop.

“Lucky I didn’t catch it. But not once did Mr Pélicot say to himself, ‘I’ve gone too far’. He showed no pity, no pity at all.”

Gisèle’s daughter Caroline Darian, who’s in her 40s, wrote a book about the case called “And I stopped calling you Daddy”, which the Judge has quoted from in court before.

In the skin-crawling book, she wrote how her dad Dominique allegedly stopped men he invited to the family home from wearing protection before sexually abusing her mum.

Gisèle also informed the court today she was “convinced” she had Alzheimer’s after first experiencing memory loss in 2011 and then in 2013.

She said how she’d asked her husband if he was drugging her as a joke – but he allegedly “broke down in tears” before saying: “You actually think I could do that?”

The mum even said her husband came with her to see a doctor about concerns she had Alzheimer’s – and they allegedly told her she may have had a “brain seizure”.

When Gisèle first took the stand this morning, she was asked by the judge to give her name and age.

She said to the court: “Gisèle Pélicot, I will be 72 in December.”

The judge then said she will be allowed to testify freely and then be asked a few questions.

She began by thanking the police lieutenant of Carperntras who initially arrested her husband when he was caught filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket – leading to the investigation.

Gisèle said: “He saved my life and I probably wouldn’t be here without him.”

She has referred to her husband Dominique as “Mr Pélicot”, who she says she’s in the process of divorcing.

The mum and grandmother said that she will keep her married name for the remainder of the trial but revert back to her maiden name afterwards.

Initially she had told the magistrate that she wanted to be referred to by her maiden name but changed her mind later on.

Upon being asked why she changed her mind, she said it was “for [her] grandchildren”.

Gisèle told the court: “When you look at me you think she’s a strong woman, but inside it’s a heap or ruins.

“The facade is strong, inside it’s not the same.”

Recounting the moment he allegedly confessed to taking pictures under women’s skirts, Gisèle said: “We are in the kitchen, he sat down and broke down in tears. I didn’t understand.”

He allegedly told her he had “done something silly” and said he’d been caught “filming under women’s skirts”.

She continued: “I said I forgive you, we’ve never had any problems in 50 years. But there won’t be a next time, otherwise I’ll leave.

“He said ‘I’m not going to do it again’. I trusted it as our relationship was based on trust for the past 50 years.”

Gisèle also recounted the moment she first entered the police station for questioning in what she thought was a “formality”.

She told the judge that she was asked by cops to “describe [her] husband” to which she responded that he was a “well-intentioned and a nice guy.”

Gisèle then said: “I was told to remove my mask and the policeman said ‘I’m going to tell you something you won’t like.'”

In her testimony, Gisèle revealed how her husband would apparently take pictures of her, including when she would leave the bathroom.

She said she became annoyed by the constant photo-taking and asked her husband to stop, to which he allegedly replied: “You should be pleased that after 50 years your husband still wants to take photos of you.”

Gisèle has insisted that the trial take place in public so the full facts of the case emerge.

Yesterday she was upset by difficult questions asked by defence lawyers with her three children leaving the courtroom in disgust.

“Of course she was offended,” said Antoine Camus, her second lawyer.

“She wanted to respond, we felt her bobbing up and down behind us, saying ‘I want to answer, I just have to answer’, and we told her, ‘tomorrow!'”

Gisèle’s husband, Dominique Pélicot, 71, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty following his trial at Vaucluse Criminal Court.

He and 51 other male defendants are charged with “aggravated rape” following multiple videoed attacks on Gisèle Pélicot, 72.

He is said to have then filmed the horrid attacks over nine years between 2011 and 2020.

On Tuesday he reportedly answered “yes” when asked if he was guilty of the accusations against him.

But the horrific case may never have come to light had Pélicot not been arrested in 2020 in a supermarket in Carpentras for filming up the skirts of other customers.

When police searched his camera phone, and equipment kept at his home, they found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse.

Alleged rapists involved in the case include civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers.

Yesterday the French court heard that in some of the heinous footage Pélicot allegedly takes turns with three other men to rape his wife in one single incident.

The instances of the horrific abuse sometimes lasted as long as six hours and alleged drugged victim Ms Pélicot could be heard snorting and breathing heavily in clips, the court was told.

The court in Avignon also heard yesterday that Pélicot once accused his wife of infidelity when she discovered she had a sexually transmitted disease.

Ms Pélicot allegedly told her husband she needed treatment for an unexplained sexual illness – to which he suggested she’d been having affairs.

He reportedly asked her: “So, what are you doing with your days?”

On Tuesday, it emerged that the couple’s child – Caroline Darian – was pictured with no clothes on, almost certainly while drugged.

Mr Pélicot kept the images in a computer file entitled “Around my daughter, naked,” the court heard.

When Presiding Judge Roger Arata began reading out details of the pictures, Ms Darian – who was in the public gallery – collapsed in tears, and had to leave the court building for around 20 minutes.

Amazon

Ms Darian’s book about the case called ‘And I stopped calling you Daddy’[/caption]

Caroline fears she may have been drugged and raped by her fatherAFP

She said she was “haunted by the fear” that her father may have invited men to rape her too, adding: “I’m convinced I was drugged, but he’ll never admit it.”

The family home, in Mazan, some 20 miles from Avignon, allegedly became a crime scene over at least a decade, when streams of men were invited to attack Ms Pélicot.

Her husband is said to have used an online libertine platform to contact them between 2011 and 2020.

Detectives have listed a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified.

They are all being tried alongside Mr Pélicot , a former employee at French utility company, EDF (Electricity of France).

One of 51 accused said he thought that the presence of cameras made the rapes legal, the court heard.

Judge Arata said the unnamed man told police: “It couldn’t have been anything bad because it was all filmed.”

Another defendant told detectives he thought Ms Pélicot was “play-acting at being asleep,” as part of a libertine fantasy.

“The victim was not asleep, but unconscious, which explains why the incident lasted so long,’ said the Judge.

Ms Pélicot, a frail mother-of-three, was supported by her two adult sons as she remained in the public gallery on Tuesday, the second day of the trial.

Pélicot was allegedly a multiple rapist who moved his family from greater Paris in 1991, and later allegedly set up the sex ring.

It involved advertising on a site for ‘partners’ on an online forum called ‘Without Her Knowing’.

Participants would discuss performing acts on unwitting partners, and then film their depravity, before storing the videos on a USB drive dubbed “Abuses”.

In Pélicot’s case, the data eventually fell into the hand of police, who confirmed it enabled them to identify the 92 cases of rape.

Of the 72 men involved, 51 aged between 26 and 73 were identified and arrested by the police.

Mr Pélicot is said to have sedated his wife by putting tablets of Temesta – a powerful anxiolytic – into her evening dinner.

He then invited strangers from the online forum into the couple’s bedroom, so that his wife could be raped while unconscious.

All were told to wash their hands, and not to wear aftershave, so she would not sense they were strangers.

In a separate case, Mr Pélicot has been charged with raping and murdering a 23-year-old estate agent in Paris in 1991.

Unknown

Dominique allegedly gave the dozens of men a series of sick rules on ‘how to rape his wife’[/caption]

AFP

Caroline Darian (L) in court alongside her mother (C)[/caption]