Dominique Pelicot “offered his wife to me in exchange for gardening”, but I “refused to go” because he had warned me that he was drugging her to put her to sleep and for me “it was about rape,” a witness said Tuesday before the Vaucluse criminal court.
Jérôme B. 42 years old is a truck driver. In March 2020, like the 49 other men tried with him in Avignon since September 2, he came into contact with Dominique Pelicot, the main accused in this emblematic trial of chemical submission and violence against women, on the libertine site coco .fr, since closed.
He appears in the file because he was identified thanks to the hard drive on which Dominique Pelicot, 71, archived the photos and videos of the rapes he had committed for 10 years on his wife, Gisèle, previously put to sleep by sleeping pills that he administered to him without his knowledge, and those committed by the men he invited on the internet to come and do the same. But Jérôme B.’s file was empty, Jérôme B. ultimately never having gone to the Pelicot couple’s home in Mazan, a small town in Vaucluse.
“I tell him that it’s rape and that I don’t agree”
On the witness stand, Jérôme B., against whom no charges were ultimately brought, explains: “He asks me to do gardening work and in exchange, he offers me his wife. I offer him one Saturday morning, he tells me no because he gives him a pill to put him to sleep. He adds that he drugs her woman and offers it to men very often. I tell her that it’s rape and that I don’t agree.”
Heard immediately, Cyril F., the second “empty file” in the case, explains that he also briefly exchanged with Dominique Pelicot on coco.fr. “Until he told me that his wife would take pills and that she would probably be asleep when I arrived.” “I thought he was a young man talking nonsense, I didn’t think at all that someone could drug his wife and I cut it short”says this 48-year-old civil servant, who does not remember precisely if Dominique Pelicot told him that he administered the sleeping pills in secret or if Gisèle took them herself. “In any case, he didn’t say to you ‘Come on, we’re going to participate in a rape’?“, asks Me Nadia El Bouroumi, who defends an accused. “Oh no“, replies the witness.
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