Hell is sometimes paved with ordinary dreams: enjoying a retirement in the sun, leaving the hectic pace of the Paris region for a gentler daily life. In March 2013, Gisèle P., 60, moved with her husband, Dominique P., into a house with a swimming pool, rented in Mazan, a town in Vaucluse with 6,000 inhabitants. It is behind the thick walls of this banality that abjection hides. It will be dissected before the Vaucluse departmental criminal court, in an extraordinary trial that opens in Avignon this Monday, September 2 and will last until December 20. 51 men, including Dominique P., will appear there – the vast majority for “aggravated rape”, a crime punishable by twenty years of criminal imprisonment. The facts alleged? Between 2011 and 2020, drugged on numerous occasions by her husband, to the point of unconsciousness “close to a coma” According to the order of the investigating judge who led the investigation, Gisèle P. was raped by a multitude of men recruited on the Coco.gg website. Dominique P. documents the horror: 20,000 photos and videos – with unambiguous titles (such as “ABUSE / night of 09 06 2020 with charly 6th time”) – were found on the computer of this retiree, now aged 71. These images made it possible to count 92 rapes, most of them committed in their bedroom.
Gisèle and Dominique P. met in 1971 and married two years later. From their union were born three children, now aged 34 to 47. Settled in the suburban housing estate of Villiers-sur-Marne (Val-de-Marne), the family is “union”, traces back to Figaro their daughter Caroline Darian, involved in the fight against chemical submission with her association M’endors pas. Former EDF employee, Dominique P. has several professional lives until becoming a computer equipment salesman; as for Gisèle P., she has a career as a business manager at EDF. She is described as “helpful”, “generous”, “jovial” by her two daughters-in-law. One of them nevertheless points out this tendency to put “her husband is very much ahead”, has “go after him.” The couple experienced several crises, marked by mutual infidelities.
“She doesn’t suspect anything?”
During her last years in the Paris region, Gisèle P. noted some «absences». By his own admission, her husband began to drug her, mainly using Temesta, an anxiolytic, which his doctor in Mazan would later prescribe to him. The pensioner, who was never paid in return for the rapes and whose motive would be at the heart of the hearings, recounted during the judicial inquiry a shift in his sixties. Detached from his “family responsibilities”, “alone” with his wife, he becomes “more demanding in his sexual fantasies.” Gisèle P. talks about “normal sexuality” ; she is unaware that he is using chemical submission to indulge in “certain sexual practices that she refused.” The husband also assumes “to derive pleasure from seeing one’s wife touched by someone else,” a “practical” discovered online in his mid-fifties. His psychological expertise concludes that “the absence of pathology or mental abnormality, but a sexual deviance or paraphilia of the voyeurism type” and to “a perverse personality.”
Gisèle P.’s memory loss and fatigue intensify upon her arrival in Mazan. “One morning, she woke up in a panic, with a new haircut, without understanding how this was possible. She went to her hairdresser who said to her “but yes Mrs. P., you came yesterday!”” reports Stéphane Babonneau, one of his lawyers, specifying that the couple surrounded by friends did not live in a “behind closed doors”, more “went out, traveled.” During this decade of violence, she consulted several doctors, always accompanied by Dominique P., who justified her symptoms by overwork linked to the care of their grandchildren in the Paris region. No doctor established chemical submission. Destitute, her relatives suspected the beginnings of Alzheimer’s, while Gisèle P., anxious, found herself hampered even in her movements. “She lives with the symptoms of an illness that no one can explain, which has been a means of isolation,” supports Stéphane Babonneau.
The apparent normality collapses on September 12, 2020, when Dominique P. is arrested by security guards at the Leclerc in Carpentras for filming under the skirts of several women. Analysis of his computer equipment reveals the horror: thousands of photos of Gisèle P. unconscious, videos of rapes, exchanges on Skype and Coco, in a digital chat room called “A l’insu”. “Do you still have it tested from time to time? Surely it’s clean?” asks an Internet user. “She doesn’t suspect anything?” asks another. “No, she puts it down to fatigue,” the husband answers. “You’re like me, you like rape mode,” he wrote to a third. Dominique P. quickly confessed to the facts, in police custody. Confronted with the photo of his daughter Caroline Darian naked, which he admitted to having taken without her knowledge, Dominique P. denied having drugged her. Further into the horror, the pensioner’s DNA match allowed the Nanterre “cold case” unit, in the fall of 2022, to indict Dominique P. for murder preceded or followed by rape of a 23-year-old woman in December 1991 in Paris and for attempted rape with a weapon of another 19-year-old woman on May 11, 1999, in Villeparisis.
“Every individual had free will”
For Gisèle P., as for her children, it is a question of mourning. For a husband (from whom she has now filed for divorce) whom she described during her first hearing as “a super guy” ; of a father portrayed by his daughter as “super present”, who accompanies him to school and to dance; the mourning of a life and a facade of happiness. These cataclysmic revelations, then their media coverage in 2023 in the world et the Parisian, destabilize the family unit, which has become united again as the trial approaches. “After a life of work, a life without drama, [Gisèle P.] longed to spend happy days with her husband. When the affair broke out, her world collapsed. Her life was shattered,” insists her lawyer. Gisèle P. suffers from four STIs, is affected by a “strong post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as strong sexual harm,” notes the psychological expertise. «L’expert [a conclu] that the attacks she suffered were directly, certainly and exclusively attributable to the events she suffered,” notes the judge. Overwhelmed, she considered ending her life.
By its scale, its duration, the number of accused, this dizzying affair destroys the figure of the monster, of the “madman”, these assumptions of rape culture attempting to dehumanize the perpetrators of violence. The 51 indicted are “Mr. Everyman” and the majority do not have any mental or psychological illness. They are aged from 26 to 74, and come from all backgrounds. They work as journalists, soldiers, prison guards, workers, IT specialists, truck drivers, etc. “Each of their trajectories is unique: the one who is HIV positive and who came back six times, without ever protecting himself, the one who wanted to do the same to his mother, the firefighter… Is it possible that we find a common factor between them all?” projects lawyer Stéphane Babonneau. If some of the accused have a history of domestic or sexual violence, most of them are considered invested fathers, companions “attentive” et “magnets”, friends “concerned about others”, say their relatives.
Everyone knew that Gisèle P. was under the influence of medication, assures Dominique P. With this information in hand, according to him, only a third of the individuals contacted would have refused her proposal. To the investigators, few admit to having been aware of her state of chemical submission, a key issue in the trial. Almost with one voice, they testify to having believed they were participating in a “libertine game”, and “couple scenario” to which they would have complied, sometimes under the «manipulation» by Dominique P. The instruction points out that “each individual had free will” and could have “leave the premises”. Most of them claim to have initially thought that Gisèle P. was doing “like sleeping”. The modus operandi leaves little doubt as to their level of information. These men are asked by Dominique P. to park at a distance from the house so as not to attract the attention of the neighborhood, not to smoke cigarettes, not to wear perfume. On arrival, they must undress in the kitchen, wash their hands, or even warm them on the radiator before entering the overheated room.
Form of criminal male solidarity
The videos end up clearing up the confusion: Gisèle’s snoring, her lethargy, the “gently” whispered by Dominique P. “No! No! Not with… Not with your hands, not with your nails, that will wake her up, she’s ticklish,” he intimated in October 2020 to Mathieu D., 49 years old. His “guest” is surprised next to him, “It’s crazy that she doesn’t wake up.” “Somnophilia, at this level of sedation, could be reminiscent of necrophilia,” an expert testifies. In some recordings, the victim presents “choking and pauses in breathing during certain fellatio” imposed. Faced with their contradictions, several of those under investigation attempt to avoid responsibility with overtones of the right of the first night. “As long as the husband was present, there was no rape,” tries Adrien L., a 34-year-old site manager. Redouan E., a 55-year-old nurse, believes that her husband “was the holder of his consent.”
Behind these individuals with multiple trajectories, the hearings will involve deciphering a system of reproduction of violence, based on chemical submission. As early as 2012, on Coco, a nurse gave Dominique P. advice on the dose of Temesta to administer. In a form of criminal male solidarity, the main accused reproduced the same pattern, to the point of providing tablets to four co-accused. Among them, Jean-Pierre M., 63, to whom he had repeatedly offered to “come and rape his wife.” Between 2015 and 2020, around ten attempted rapes and rapes were allegedly committed by the two men against Jean-Pierre M.’s wife, for which they are also under investigation.
During this trial, of an unprecedented scale for a common law case, Gisèle P. will have to face for the first time “these 50 people who raped her and whom she doesn’t know”, recalls his advice. “It’s an ordeal that no one has ever experienced. No one has had so many alleged rapists and the discovery of the facts in court,” he adds. The hearings should not be held behind closed doors. Gisèle P. wants a “corporate trial” to raise awareness of rape under chemical submission. So that never again will the illusion of normality lock victims into violence for so long.
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