For Vanessa P., who “no more consideration for” her ex-companion, the anger was cold.
Like around fifty other men aged 26 to 74, Quentin H., 34, then a prison guard, responded to Dominique Pelicot's invitation to come rape his wifeat their marital home in Men in Vaucluse.
“When we see what he is accused of, we can doubt everything”, “he is a manipulator”, this auxiliary childcare worker added, without glancing at her former partner.
“Manipulator”, a qualifier also used by Emilie O., 33 years old, about Hugues M., 39 years old. Their union ended in November 2020, when the facts targeting Dominique Pelicot and her husband were revealed.
Along the way, she discovered the multiple extramarital affairs of the one who shared his life.
To “protect children”
“I thought I would live a peaceful and fulfilling life, but I was wrong.” Since then, she has lived with the doubt of having herself been a victim of chemical submissionlike Gisèle Pelicot, doused with anxiolytics and raped for ten years by her husband and the fifty men he had recruited on the internet.
A doubt that Cilia M. no longer has: between 2015 and 2018, her husband, Jean-Pierre M., 63 years old, and Dominique Pelicot, 71 years old, had it raped about ten times while reproducing the process on her used on Gisèle.
“He was a wonderful person. He destroyed us”she testified, specifying that she “would never forgive” to her ex-husband, whose name she however kept and against whom she refused to file a complaint, for “protect their five children”.
Others still wonder, even if it means finding excuses for their ex-companions. “He was always respectful: when it was no, it was no. He never insisted (…) I absolutely don’t understand why he is here today,” lamented Corinne M., already separated from her husband, Thierry P., at the time of the acts with which she is accused.
Their relationship had been broken up by the death of their son in a road accident following which Thierry P. had fallen into alcoholism.
“He wanted to look elsewhere”
Samira T. looking for her “answers to (his) questions for three and a half years” about his companion, Jérôme V., accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot six times in 2020.
But she hasn't left him and she persists in “support him”: “if we met, it’s not a coincidence, I had this mission”.
“He had no reason to look elsewhere,” added, in tears, the one who had nevertheless accepted his almost daily requests for sexual relations, “at 10 p.m.”taking intimate photos or even naked walks.
Going so far as to accuse herself, Hien B., she, feels responsible “for refusing all the time” her husband's advancesJean-Luc L., at a time when she was caring for her sick mother: “I think as a man he wanted to look elsewhere.”
Like her, Sonia R., in a relationship with Patrice N. for 16 months, only wants to think about “the future”: “I support him and give him my total confidence. For me there is a present and there will be an after, whatever the cost, whatever happens, whatever happens”.
“Beyond their understanding”
“In the affairs of sexual violencethose close to the accused themselves sometimes have difficulty imagining the violence, because it is beyond their comprehension.” explains Véronique Le Goaziou, associate researcher at the Mediterranean Sociology Laboratory and specialist in sexual violence: “And, in some cases, they do not give credence to the facts reported by the victims: they cannot or do not want to believe it.”
And to add: “Sexual violence does not only impact the perpetrators and their victims, (…) entire families suffer the consequences. (…) As for (the companions), they are in a form of astonishment“.
“I don’t see him as a rapist at all. That’s not him.”assured Lucie B., Grégory S.'s common-law partner for 7 years, from whom she is expecting a third child.
After the fact, in 2017, “he told me that it was mainly a delusion of the husband and his wife. That she was drunk.”
