Gisèle Pelicot thought she was losing her mind. She was only in her sixties but memory lapses, strange gynaecological issues, weight loss and difficulty controlling her arm convinced her that she was succumbing to a mystery illness. She was horrified to wake up one morning with a new haircut, so she rushed to her hairdresser, who told her she’d been in the day before. She couldn’t remember saying goodbye to her adult children when they came to visit. She was so scared of these blackouts that she stopped driving and stopped taking the train to visit her family, in case she missed her stop.
Her devoted husband of nearly 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, stayed by her side, driving her to specialist appointments, scans and supported her in seeking a diagnosis for what she thought was Alzheimer’s. Never in her – or, for that matter, her doctors’ – wildest dreams did she imagine he was the man causing her mystery illness.
Between 2011 and 2020, Dominique had been drugging his wife and recruiting strange men to come over and rape her unconscious body. He would crush sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication and slip them into Gisèle’s dinner or a glass of wine, then message his guest, who he’d told to wait in a nearby car park.
They were instructed to warm their hands under water or against the radiator so their cold touch wouldn’t startle her. They couldn’t smell of <anything>, not cologne, not cigarettes, lest it rouse her. They were told to flee if she so much as moved her arm. Dominique would then film as the man (who was not told to wear a condom – Gisèle now has four sexually transmitted diseases) raped his wife as she was curled up in a foetal position – essentially a corpse. At the end of the night, Dominique would clean his wife’s body.
Dominique is currently on trial in the southern France town of Avignon, and the proceedings are open to the public at Gisèle’s request. She has appeared with her three adult children, steadfast in her determination for justice despite being in “ruins”. “When people see me, they say: ‘She’s a strong woman’. The facade looks solid, but inside, it’s a pile of ruins. Everything needs to be rebuilt.”
Gisèle’s story has horrified not only France – which is still reckoning with its questionable attitude towards women and consent – but the entire world. Until her case went to trial in early September, Giesle, who is now 72, was anonymous. In a revealing article from June 2023, in which most of the men were named and quoted, the French newspaper La Monde referred to her only as Françoise P. But Gisèle waived her right to anonymity. She wants women to know they do not need to feel any shame after being assaulted.
What we know so far
Dominique Pelicot, who is now 71, is accused of drugging and raping his wife and inviting 72 other men to rape her between 2011 to 2020. Police retrieved about 20,000 images Dominique took of the rapes. He is now on trial with 50 other defendants who are also accused of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault. There were so many defendants that a second glass box had to be built to contain them all in the courtroom.
Dominique has not tried to maintain his innocence. His lawyer reportedly said that Dominique “always declared himself guilty,” adding, “I put her to sleep, I offered her, and I filmed.”
Gisèle’s husband had been meticulous in his documenting of the abuse, storing footage on his computer. It would have continued to go unnoticed had he not been reported to police for taking upskirt photos of two women at a supermarket in 2020. Gisèle accompanied her husband to the police station, thinking it was just a blip that they could get past, until police began asking her about her sex life. “I told him I had never practised partner-swapping or threesomes. I said I was a one-man woman. I couldn’t bear any man’s hand on me other than my husband’s,” she said. Then, the police showed her photos on her husband’s phone of a man and woman on a bed. She didn’t recognise herself until the police pointed out that it was her bedroom. “It was hard to recognise myself. … It was unbearable. I was inert, in my bed, and a man was raping me.
“My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart,” she said. “Everything I had built up over 50 years.” She says she wanted to end her life, but needed to tell her three adult children that their father had been arrested. She said her daughter’s howl is “etched into my memory”.
Later, Gisèle and Dominique’s daughter – who uses the pen name Caroline Daian – discovered that her father had photographed her too. In 2022, she wrote a memoir about her family’s horrific experience. Domonique is also accused of violating the privacy of his two daughters-in-law.
Gisèle left the house with two suitcases (“All that was left for me of 50 years together”) and started divorce proceedings, which were finalised on the first day of Dominique’s trial.
The perfect couple
Gisèle thought she and Dominique were a “strong couple” with a normal sex life. They met when they were 19, were married at 21 and had three children and seven grandchildren. “We weren’t rich but we were happy,” she said. “Even our friends said we were the ideal couple.”
When their children were growing up, Gisèle was the breadwinner, working as manager in Paris for 20 years. When she retired in 2013, they moved to Mazan, where their children and grandchildren would stay on summer holidays and they would host dinners on the terrace, have dance competitions and play Trivial Pursuit, according to their daughter’s memoir.
Dominique and Gisèle were seemingly the perfect couple. Gisèle was friendly with her neighbour, who loved to talk about cycling and who she’d run into at the bakery. She had no idea he was coming over to rape her under the cover of drugged darkness.
Who is Dominique Pelicot?
A trained electrician, Dominique has been described as a typical man next door. He was an avid cyclist, he drove the kids to school, picked his daughter up late from parties and was the one she ran to when she needed consoling. He was the “perfect doting dad”, his daughter wrote.
Dominique reportedly used the now-disbanded website Coco.fr – which was known as a “hunting ground for predators” due to the anonymous nature of the platform – to recruit strangers to have sex with his unconscious wife. The website was associated with 23,000 police cases in France between 2021 and 2024, until French courts closed it down in June. Dominique is said to have exchanged messages in a forum called <A son insu>, which translates to “Without her knowing”.
Of an evening, Dominique would create what toxicologists called a “cocktail” of medication: Temesta (used to treat anxiety and seizures), Zolpidem (for insomnia), and hypnotic and anxiolytic (anti-anxiety) drugs and add it to her food or drink.
He reportedly told a psychologist that he committed the abuse because Gisèle had refused to join him in swinging or invite other people into their bedroom. In his messages to the men, he apparently used the word “rape” and let them know that he was giving Gisèle sleeping pills so that he could do things to her that she would otherwise refuse.
It’s also been reported that Dominique is accused of attacking a real estate agent, 19-year-old Estella, in 1999. Le Monde reported that Estella was assaulted by a man who had shown up to view an apartment. She escaped, and when Dominique was arrested for an earlier supermarket upskirting incident in 2010, police took his DNA and found that it matched that found on Estella’s shoe.
After that discovery, police officers reportedly connected him to the unsolved rape and murder of another real estate agent, 23-year-old Sophie Narme, who was drugged, raped and stabbed in the chest in 1991.
Le Monde reports that Dominique admitted to attacking Estella out of “impulse” but denies murdering Sophie.
Not all men, but …
Her husband, her neighbour, a firefighter, a former police officer, a local councillor, nurses, a soldier, a journalist, truck drivers and a civil servant: more than 70 men aged 26 to 73 when they were arrested. Of the 50 who are on trial, 18 are in custody and 32 are attending the trial as free men. One is yet to be found and will be tried in absentia. There are reportedly up to 30 more men in the recordings who detectives were unable to trace. Most of them face up to 20 years in jail if found guilty of aggravated rape. Some have been convicted and even jailed for domestic violence before. Five of them reportedly face charges for possessing child sexual abuse material. Many of them are in relationships and have children. One of them arrived late to the courthouse because he was dropping his son at school.
Gisèle testified while all 51 men sat behind her in the courtroom. She has seen footage of the rapes, but this trial is the first time she will watch them in the presence of her attackers. Some of them have pleaded guilty, others have said they were tricked by Dominique. One has reportedly gone so far as to claim “consent by delegation” – in other words, her husband said it was okay, so that’s enough. “He does what he wants with his wife,” the man apparently said. “As long as the husband was there, there was no rape”. (Le Monde reported that this man was sentenced to 18 years in prison in April 2023 for rape and violence against former partners.)
Gisèle is adamant that rape is not a strong enough word. She told the court it was torture. “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,” she said. She added that none of them were tricked by her husband. “These men entered my home, respected the imposed protocol,” she said.
Why did Gisèle waive her right to anonymity?
“I speak for all women who are drugged and don’t know about it. I do it on behalf of all women who will perhaps never know,” Gisèle said. Remaining anonymous is “what her attackers would have wanted”, her lawyers added. After her divorce, Gisèle changed her surname but is using her married name for the trial.
“She wants people to know what happened to her and believe she has no reason to hide. … Whether one likes it or not, this trial goes beyond the limits of this courtroom. And going behind closed doors also means asking my client to be locked in a place with those who attacked her.”
Only one of the men involved in the trial is not charged with the rape, assault or attempted rape of Gisèle. Instead, he’s accused of being a copy-cat, drugging his own wife to rape her. Dominique is charged with raping that man’s wife, too.
Between now and December, the defendants will appear in small groups before a panel of five judges. Dominique was hospitalised on Tuesday September 10 right before he was due to give evidence, which means the trial could potentially be adjourned.
1800RESPECT is the national domestic, family, and sexual violence counselling, information and support service. Lifeline 13 11 14
