Gisele Pelicot tells of ordeal as ex-husband jailed in mass rape trial in France

Gisele Pelicot spoke of her “very difficult ordeal” after a court in France sentenced her ex-husband to 20 years in jail for drugging and raping her and allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious, in abuse that lasted nearly a decade.

The sentence against Dominique Pelicot was the maximum possible under French law. He was declared guilty of all charges against him. At the age of 72, it could mean that he spends the rest of his life in prison.

He will not be eligible to ask for early release until at least two thirds of the sentence has been served.

Roger Arata, the lead judge of the court in the southern French city of Avignon, told him to stand for the sentencing. After it was delivered, he sat back down and cried.

The judge read out the verdicts one after the other against Dominique Pelicot and the 50 other men tried in the case that shook France.

“You are therefore declared guilty of aggravated rape on the person of Gisele Pelicot”, the judge said as he worked his way through names on the list.

Gisele Pelicot was seated on one side of the courtroom, facing the defendants and sometimes nodding her head as verdicts were announced. Delivering the guilty verdicts and sentences took Mr Arata just over an hour.

Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro, said that she would weigh a possible appeal, but also expressed hope that Gisele Pelicot would find solace in the court’s rulings.

“I wanted Mrs Pelicot to be able to emerge from these hearings in peace, and I think that the verdicts will contribute to this relief for Mrs Pelicot,” she said.

Speaking outside court after the sentencing, Gisele Pelicot expressed support for other victims of sexual violence.

“We share the same fight,” she said in her first words after the court handed down prison sentences ranging from three to 20 years.

As campaigners against sexual violence protested outside the court, the 72-year-old expressed “my profound gratitude towards the people who supported me”.

“Your messages moved me deeply, and they gave me the strength to come back, every day, and survive through these long daily hearings,” she said. “This trial was a very difficult ordeal.”

She said she was thinking of her grandchildren after enduring more than three months of court hearings that dealt with the nearly decade of rapes and other abuse inflicted on her by her now ex-husband and his accomplices.

“It’s also for them that I led this fight,” she said of her grandchildren.

“I wanted all of society to be a witness to the debates that took place here. I never regretted making this decision. I have trust in our capacity to collectively project ourselves towards a future where all, women and men, can live in harmony, with respect and mutual understanding. Thank you.”

Of the 50 accused of rape, just one was acquitted but was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Another man was also found guilty on the sexual assault charge that he was tried for – meaning all 51 of the defendants were found guilty in one way or another.

In a side room where family members of the defendants watched the proceedings on television screens, some burst into tears and gasped as the sentences were revealed.

Protesters gathered outside the courthouse followed the proceedings on their phones. Some read out the verdicts and applauded as they were announced inside.

Dominique Pelicot admitted that for years he knocked out his then wife of 50 years with drugs so that he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.

The appalling ordeal inflicted over nearly a decade on Gisele Pelicot, now a 72-year-old grandmother, in what she thought was a loving marriage, and her courage during the bruising and stunning trial have transformed the retired power company worker into a feminist hero of the nation.

Stretching over more than three months, the trial galvanised campaigners against sexual violence and spurred calls for tougher measures to stamp out rape culture.

Prosecutors had asked that Dominique Pelicot get the maximum penalty of 20 years and for sentences of 10 to 18 years for the others tried for rape.

But the court was mostly more lenient than prosecutors had hoped, with many sentenced to less than a decade in prison.

For the defendants other than Dominique Pelicot, the sentences ranged from three to 15 years in jail, with some of the time suspended for some of them. The judge told six defendants they were now free, accounting for time already spent in detention while awaiting trial.

The defendants were all accused of having taken part in Dominique Pelicot’s sordid rape and abuse fantasies that were acted out in the couple’s retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.

Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilisers in food and drink that he gave his then wife, knocking her out so profoundly that he could do what he wanted to her for hours.

One of the men was found guilty and sentenced to 12 years in jail not for assaulting Gisele Pelicot but for drugging and raping his own wife – with help and drugs from Dominique Pelicot, who was also found guilty of raping that man’s wife, too.

The five judges voted by secret ballot in their rulings, with a majority vote required to convict and also for the sentences of those found guilty.

Campaigners against sexual violence view the trial as a possible turning point in the fight against rape culture and the use of drugs to subdue victims.

Gisele Pelicot’s courage in waiving her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual abuse and successfully pushing for the hearings and shocking evidence – including videos – to be heard in open court have fuelled conversations both on a national level in France and among families, couples and groups of friends about how to better protect women and the role that men can play in pursuing that goal.

A large banner that campaigners hung on a city wall opposite the courthouse read, thank you Gisele.

Dominique Pelicot first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him surreptitiously filming up women’s skirts.

Police subsequently found his library of homemade images documenting years of abuse inflicted on his wife – more than 20,000 photos and videos in all, stored on computer drives and catalogued in folders marked “abuse”, “her rapists”, “night alone” and other titles.

The abundance of evidence led police to the other defendants. In the videos, investigators counted 72 different abusers, but were not able to identify them all.

Although some of the accused – including Dominique Pelicot – acknowledged that they were guilty of rape, many did not, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings sparked wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.

Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent covered his wife, too. Some sought to excuse their behaviour by insisting that they had not intended to rape anyone when they responded to the husband’s invitations to come to their home.