A woman who was raped hundreds of times after she was drugged by her husband has revealed how she found out about the horrific betrayal. Gisele Pelicot took to the stand in her husband’s rape trial and explained how she had no idea she had been subjected to more than a decade of abuse by him and dozens of men he invited to their home in the small town of Mazan, in the South of France. Her husband of 50 years had been arrested for taking upskirt photos in a supermarket and she accompanied him to the police station, standing up for him as a thoughtful “nice guy”. But the court heard it was at that police station in November 2020, a lieutenant slid a photograph across the table and asked her “Is this your room?”. That shocking photograph was Gisele, in her own bedroom, with a man she did not know. A second photograph was produced. The 71-year-old grandmother told the court: “I’m being raped. The trauma is enormous, I want to go home.” The court was told it wasn’t until more than three years later, until May 2024 as the trial approached, that her lawyer convinced her to watch the videos recorded, archived and captioned by her husband, with the precision of a documentalist. In a clear voice she told the packed courtroom in the Vaucluse Criminal Court in the city of Avignon: “I was sacrificed on the altar of vice. It’s a dead woman on a bed. This isn’t a bedroom, it’s an operating theatre. They treat me like a garbage bag, a rag doll. These aren’t sex scenes, these are rape scenes, it’s unbearable, unbearable.” A judge asked her whether she and her husband ever discussed filming their sexual intercourse. She said: “I never agreed to Monsieur Pelicot filming us having sex. No, the only time we talked about something like this was at the swingers’ room at the nightclub. I understood that he would have wanted to do it. But for me it was impossible.” Mr Pelicot and 50 others are accused of raping her, and while Mr Pelicot and 14 of his co-accused have admitted their part in France’s worst rape case, 35 men – including civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers – deny that they forced themselves on Mrs Pelicot while she was unconscious, claiming that she in some way consented. The trial earlier heard the couple was now in the process of divorcing, and Mr Pélicot remains on remand accused of a series of unspeakable crimes that could see him remain in prison for up to 20 years. Police found images on Mr Pélicot’s camera and laptop that showed multiple alleged rapes of his wife between 2011 and 2020 – the majority committed by strangers that he had found online. Jérémie Bosse Platière – the officer who first brought Mr Pélicot to justice – estimated that he ‘committed at least 200 acts of rape against his wife’ before strangers began to arrive at their home. They had been contacted by Mr Pélicot on a libertine sex website. Commissioner Bosse Platière said there were hundreds of photos and pornographic videos showing ‘Gisèle Pélicot asleep and in the presence of other individuals taking part in acts of a sexual nature.’ It was while in custody that Mr Pélicot’s hard drive, hidden under a printer, which contained a file called Abuses, was found. It classified the nickname and telephone numbers of attackers, together with some 3,800 photos and videos of Gisèle Pélicot being raped, between 2011 and 2020. Detectives have listed a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified. Mr Pélicot moved his family from greater Paris in 1991, and later allegedly set up the sex ring. Participants would discuss performing acts on unwitting partners, and then film their depravity, before storing the videos on a USB drive. Of the 83 men involved, 51 aged between 26 and 73 were identified and arrested by the police. The trial continues and is expected to last until December.
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