In turn, Gisèle Pelicot and her former husband spoke on Tuesday, November 19 during the 48th day of hearing, once again full of tension and emotion, at the Vaucluse criminal court, where 51 defendants are being tried for rape aggravated by chemical submission. The debates end this Wednesday, November 20, with the first pleadings of the civil parties.
“Submitting a rebellious woman was my fantasy. Out of selfishness. Without making her suffer. You have my motive”. Is this the secret of Dominique Pelicot's crimes, finally revealed after four years of proceedings and 48 days of hearing, this Tuesday, November 19 before the Vaucluse criminal court? Questioned for two hours on Tuesday, November 19 at the Vaucluse criminal court, the septuagenarian from Mazan, who swears he is trying to understand his actions, still calls on the past to help.
The rape suffered at the age of nine, at the Châteauroux hospital, this other scene of gang rape, at the age of 14, on a construction site, in which he was allegedly forced to participate. “It created a crack in my life that has not left me. The fantasy that I indelicately brought back to life is close to that.”
A question of image, images of women
It is perhaps above all a question of image, of images of women. “I had two gods in my life. My mother for 18 years and the one with whom I lived for 50 years. That's why I talk about a saint.”
Gisèle, this saint whom he adores and whom he desecrates, capturing her unconscious in these thousands of photos and videos of rare obscenity, where he degrades and humiliates her, with these men he leads. Beyond that, other visions emerge, that of this real estate agency employee, whom he tried to put to sleep with ether and rape in 1999 in Villeparisis (Seine-et-Marne).
See the victim in lingerie
“I needed to see what she looked like in lingerie.” he explained in police custody, in 2022, during the investigation led by Judge Turquey, from the Nanterre cold case unit. “The image of this young woman from 1999 is close to what I experienced at 14” he says today.
“Is it an excess of love that made you deviate?” asks Me Fanny Pierre. “Maybe you're partly right. This crack led me to this, to having accomplices, before our bodies aged. It's true that I'm a little crazy about it. Maybe it makes me brought there.”
“This trial is the trial of cowardice”
In the morning, Gisèle gives her point of view one last time on everything she has experienced. By attacking above all these men, recruited by her husband to come and abuse her, unconscious, in their bedroom.
“I knew what I was exposing myself to by renouncing this closed session. But from the start I heard a lot of inaudible things from the accused. I was remote-controlled, drugged… For me, this trial is one of cowardice I'm not going to add more, but for me it's high time that society opens its eyes to this macho, patriarchal society, where rape is trivialized. changes the way we look at rape.”
“You are the victim of rape and control”
Me Nadia El Bouroumi does not want to stop there. “You had very harsh words for our customers, and not a bad word in two months for Dominique Pelicot” Gisèle Pelicot explains: “He admitted the facts, unlike your clients. Those who admitted, I looked them in the eye, unlike those who apologize for the sake of apologizing themselves.”
The lawyer insists, recalling the investigations carried out in Nanterre: “You are the victim of rape and control. He is constantly staged. You think it lasted ten years, but maybe it was forty years.”
Fantasies he couldn't satisfy
Gisèle Pelicot sees another motive, purely sexual. “Mr. Pelicot had a lot of fantasies that he could not satisfy with me, he was very frustrated because I did not want to go to swingers' clubs. What he wanted was Ms. Pelicot. He did not didn't want another person, he found the solution by putting me to sleep.”
Caroline explodes: “You will die alone in a lie!”
It is again on a question of images that the audience is shattered. Those of Caroline, sleeping, naked, found in her father's computer, which he denies having taken.“At this point, if I had done them, I would say it. I told him in his eyes, I never did anything to you, Caroline.”
Caroline explodes. “You lie! You lie! You don't have the courage to tell the truth! Even about your former wife! You will die alone in lies, Dominique Pelicot! It's a shame for you, you have no face “
End of questions this Wednesday, before the pleadings of the civil parties. Indictment Monday 25.
