Gisele Pelicot, a French woman, has left women worldwide in awe of her courage as she confronted the 51 men who secretly abused her for years in court.
In 2010, Gisele was looking forward to retiring with her husband of 38 years. Their grown-up children had flown the nest, and at 57, she was planning to move to a picturesque Provencal village.
She dreamt of walking her French bulldog Lancome while her husband, Dominique Pelicot, enjoyed bike rides in the stunning countryside.
However, a decade later, Gisele’s idyllic life began to fall apart. She lost weight, her hair started falling out in clumps, and she experienced frequent blackouts.
The grandmother could barely stay awake and became extremely anxious, fearing that she must be dying, reports the Mirror.
Gisele’s then-husband sat by her side as she repeatedly visited her local doctor’s surgery seeking answers, but none were forthcoming. It was ‘love at first sight’ when she saw Pelicot in the Seventies, and despite facing tough times in their four-decade relationship, friends described them as the ‘perfect couple’.
What no one knew was that Pelicot was the twisted mastermind behind a horrific campaign of abuse inflicted on his wife, involving him and at least 50 other strangers he enticed into their family home.
Rapist Pelicot has been incarcerated for 20 years following a sinister nine-year reign of sexual terror over his wife, making headlines as one of France’s most depraved criminals. Termed the ‘Monster of Avignon’, Pelicot took his place among 51 other culprits sentenced for crimes ranging from aggravated rape to sexual assault.
Gisele suffered an inexplicable need to sleep constantly since the early 2010s, a troubling symptom later discovered to be the result of her husband’s grim actions. Drugging Gisele into unconsciousness, Pelicot got the idea from an online contact posing as a nurse who sent images of his own unsuspecting wife.
Procuring anti-anxiety medication under false pretexts, Pelicot calculated a dose potent enough to keep Gisele asleep unaware, enabling him to perform non-consensual sexual acts, dress her provocatively, and film the grievous actsoften with accomplices.
Moving to the tranquil village of Mazan in 2014 did not end Gisele’s nightmare. Pelicot, aged 72, grotesquely advertised online, inviting others to participate in the abuse, luring over 70 men across several years.
His chilling words to one participant: “You’re just like me, you like rape mode.”
In 2018, one of the couple’s sons described a disturbing incident during a late summer supper with his parents. “Only a few minutes after sitting down Maman was swaying in her chair as though she was drunk,” he recounted, as detailed by the couple’s daughter Caroline Darian in her memoir ‘And I Stopped Calling You Daddy’.
“Suddenly her whole body was drained of energy, like a rag doll.”
The father, Pelicot, nonchalantly told his child, “It happens. It’s better if I take her to bed.”
Gisele, aged 72, began suffering from gynecological issues alongside her blackouts and growing fatigue, leading to tests for potential brain tumours or Alzheimer’s disease. Unbeknownst to her at the time, she only felt relief when not at home.
The truth, when it emerged, was more horrific than she could have imagined. After Pelicot was caught filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020, police discovered over 20,000 videos and images on his laptop of Gisele being raped by him and others, stored on a USB stick labelled ‘Abuses’.
Confronted with the evidence at the police station, Gisele expressed that “everything caved in, everything I built for 50 years”. By examining the meticulously recorded faces and names by Pelicot, police were able to identify 54 of the men who had violated her.
However, 21 perpetrators remained unidentified.
Photos of his daughter Caroline were discovered on Pelicot’s laptop as well. Pelicot robustly refuted claims of abusing his daughter, yet he was indicted for infringing on her privacy by sharing covertly recorded images of her online, which the police located in a folder labelled “Around my daughter, naked”.
In the courtroom today, Pelicot was held accountable for capturing inappropriate images of his daughter and two daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine. During the earlier stages of the mass rape case, Caroline had yelled out to Pelicot in court that he would “die alone like a dog”.
Caroline provides unnerving details in her upcoming English book release, saying, “He did not have to go far to find willing participants. Most of those who responded lived close by,” and that “Finally, he would draw a map of how to get to the house, photograph it, and send it to those he had selected, guiding them on their final approach by text message. So as not to alert the neighbours, cars had to be parked at a nearby gym.”
Pelicot was thorough in his depravity, insisting his accomplices refrain from smoking or wearing perfume to ensure no evidence of their presence was left behind. The hands of the assailants had to be warmed under water so that their cold touch wouldn’t rouse his wife, and mobile phones were to be kept in their cars to prevent any accidental sounds.
Those who answered Pelicot’s vile summons included individuals from various backgrounds such as a fireman, a municipal councillor, and a nurse.
Gisele, who has bravely come forward with her story, had her world turned around when her ex-husband and the strangers who abused her were imprisoned except for two on medical grounds. She chose to be known as ‘Pelicot’ during the trial to allow her grandchildren to feel ‘proud’ of their lineage, as per the BBC.
After the sentencing at Avignon court, the courageous survivor expressed her optimism for a harmonious future, stating her “confidence in our capacity collectively to find a better future where women and men alike can live together with mutual respect”. Now avoiding medication, she focuses on long walks to maintain her mental and physical health.
Her son David revealed that all family photographs connected to his father have been discarded, elaborating that “got rid of everything linked to my father there and then”.