The story of the woman who was drugged by her husband for 10 years so that others would rape her
2024-09-05 21:10:23
TiranaPost
Gisèle Pélicot, a French woman who was raped by unknown men for more than 10 years after being drugged by her husband, told the court of her horror when she learned how she had been abused.
Pélicot, now 72, gave evidence on the third day of the trial in Avignon, southeastern France. Court documents show that her 71-year-old husband, Dominique Pélicot, admitted to police that he enjoyed watching other men have sex with his unconscious wife.
Many of the defendants in the case dispute the rape charge, claiming they thought they were taking part in a consensual sexual game. But Gisèle Pélicot told the court that she was "never an accomplice" in the sexual acts. This is a case that has shocked France, especially since the trial is taking place publicly.
Gisèle waived her right to anonymity to shift the "shame" onto the accused. She said she was speaking for "every woman who has been unknowingly drugged... so that no woman suffers."
She said police saved her life when they investigated her husband Dominique Pélicot's computer in November 2020 after a security guard caught him filming up women's skirts in a supermarket near their home in a village in southern France.
Police said they found a file labeled "abuse" on a USB stick connected to his computer that contained 20,000 images and footage of his wife being raped almost 100 times, the Guardian reports.
Recounting the moment in November 2020 when police first showed her images of a decade of sexual abuse orchestrated by her husband, Pélicot, who had been drugged into unconsciousness, told the court: “My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart. Everything I had built over 50 years.”
She said she barely recognized herself in the images, saying she was motionless. "I was sacrificed on the altar of vice. I was considered a rag doll, a garbage bag. When you see that woman drugged, abused, a person dead in bed - of course the body is not cold, it is warm , but it's like I'm dead."
"The police officer asked me about my sex life," she told the court. “I told him that I had never practiced partner swapping or threesomes. I said I was a woman with a man. But after an hour the officer said, "I'm going to tell you some things you won't find pleasant." He opened a folder and showed me a picture. "I didn't recognize either the man or the woman sleeping in the bed. The officer asked, 'Ma'am, is this your bed and nightstand?'
"It was difficult to distinguish myself dressed in an unfamiliar way. Then he showed me a second picture and a third. I asked him to stop. It was unbearable. I was in my bed and a man was raping me. My world was destroyed," she declared.
Gisèle said that until then their marriage had been generally happy and she and her husband had overcome a number of financial and health difficulties.
