French woman Gisèle Pelicot testified Wednesday as her ex-husband was on trial for drugging her, raping her and inviting dozens of other men to rape her.
She told the Avignon court that she wanted women who had been raped to know that “the shame is not for us, but for them”.
“I want all women who have been raped to say: Mrs. Pellicott did it, I can do it too. I don’t want them to feel ashamed anymore,” she said, referring to her plea for a public trial and for viewing of the rape video .
Ms Pellicott, 72, took the stand after her legal team asked for a chance to respond to the evidence and testimony shared so far in the trial.
She said that over the past few weeks she had watched several of the defendant’s wives, mothers and sisters take the stand to describe him as an “exceptional man.”
“It’s like the people I have at home,” she added. “But a rapist is not just someone you meet in a dark parking lot late at night. He can be found among family, among friends.”
Ms Pellicott said she was “completely devastated” and had to get back on her feet. “I don’t know if my lifetime is enough to understand,” she added.
She calls her ex-husband Mr Pellicott and said: “I wish I could still call him Dominic. We were together for 50 years and I am a happy, content woman.”
“You are a caring and attentive husband, I never doubted you. We laughed together and we cried together,” she added, her voice cracking.
She filed for divorce from Dominic in 2021.
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Dominic admitted that he recruited men online to rape his wife while he secretly dosed her with large amounts of sedatives and sleeping pills between 2010 and 2020.
Ms Pellicott said she had felt lucky to have him by her side when she suffered health problems, which were later discovered to be linked to the drugs he gave her.
“I’m trying to understand how this perfect man to me could do this. How could he betray me at this time? How could you let these strangers into my bedroom?” she said.
“I want to say to him: I have always tried to lift you to greater heights, to the light. You chose the darkest depths of human nature. You are the one who made that choice.”
Ms. Pellicott said Dominic would often cook for her and bring her ice cream after dinner – which, he later said, was how he drugged her: “I often told him: How lucky I am, You are a dear person.
She added that she never felt dizzy or had a racing heartbeat and that she must have passed out quickly when she was drugged. The next morning she would wake up in her bed feeling extra tired, but said she believed it was from a long walk.
“I have gynecological issues and some mornings I wake up with the same feeling, as if my water has broken. The signs are there, but I don’t know how to read them,” she added.
Ms Pellicott and her lawyers also discussed whether Dominic might have suffered from an inferiority complex due to an affair with a colleague, the difference in social status between them or the fact that she had a loving childhood and he did not.
Returning to the reaction to the trial, she said: “I was told I was brave. It wasn’t about being brave, it was about having the will and determination to change society.”
“Being brave means jumping into the sea to save people. I just have will and determination,” she said.
“That’s why I come here every day…even if I hear unspeakable things, I keep going because of all the men and women who are behind me.”
She said she never regretted asking for a public trial: “I did it because what happened to me could never happen again.”
Most alleged rapes are captured on video.
Most of the defendants denied raping Ms Pellicott and argued they could not be found guilty because they did not realize she was unconscious and therefore did not “know” they were raping her.
Although Ms. Pellicott appeared in court most of the time, she appeared in court only twice.
The last time, on September 18, she said she was advised to agree to a sex game and pretended to be asleep when men her husband had recruited online came to their home, which she said left her feeling “humiliated.” ”.
“These people came to rape me. Everything I heard in court was so degrading, so humiliating,” she said.
The trial has generated huge interest in France, where Ms Pellicott has become a feminist icon – not least because she waived her right to anonymity and demanded a public trial. Her legal team said an open trial would shift “stigma” back onto the defendants.
Demonstrations in support of Ms. Pellicot were held in more than a dozen cities across France on Saturday. Some feminist groups have also called on the French government to expand rape laws to include consent clauses.
The trial begins on September 2. Although the hearings were lengthy each day, they were only about halfway through due to the large number of defendants who needed to be questioned.
A verdict is expected by the end of December.
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