“Tell the truth”… Two sons facing their father

Ihis profile, his build, his name. David, the eldest son of Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot, arrives at the bar on Monday, November 18, casting an angry look towards the box where his father is sitting. “I’ll only come by once,” he will tell her, “and I want you to remember that. »

David is 50 years old. During his testimony, he calls his father “this gentleman”, or “the gentleman on my left”. He tries to express, however, the collapse that the evening of November 2, 2020 was for him, those five minutes on the phone where his mother told him what she had just learned – “the horrible, what 'there are more horrible things'. “When I hang up, I feel like vomiting. Something I do. I go to the bathroom to vomit and then I join my wife in the living room, I ask her to send the children to their room. »

David then recounts this train journey with his sister Caroline and his brother Florian, his mother who is waiting for them at the Carpentras police station, “a frail, fragile little piece of woman, completely lost”. The night of anguish in the house in Mazan where Dominique Pelicot's computer still sits, the immediate need to destroy all possible traces of this family life that he thought was happy. And then the way he burst into tears, two days later, in his wife's arms. The devastation, the mourning of this father who organized surprise birthday parties for his children, whom his friends found “terrific”, with whom he shared a taste for sport and thrillers.

“He had a suitcase and his dog left”

“When we returned to Paris, all that remained for my mother, of these 50 years of life together, was a suitcase and her dog. During her stay with us, she took long walks alone, three or four times a day, lasting more than an hour each time. I said to her one day “Mom, when you go out like that, what do you do?”. She said, “David, I'm walking around and talking to this gentleman. I ask him why he did this to me, did I deserve this”. I learned, much later, that during these walks she shouted her anger, she screamed her anger. »

From the trial, David says he expects punishment from the defendants commensurate with what the entire family suffered. And about his father, let him finally speak. “If you have an ounce of humanity left, tell us the truth, tell what you did to my sister, to my son. » Dominique Pelicot cries out, he cuts him off: “Calm down, it’s me who’s speaking. » “I can't confess to something I didn't do,” said his father when he was given the floor.

« – You took pictures of my sister.

– If I took photos, it was because they were blackmailed. »

The “cream of the crop”

On the benches there is the crowd of big days: all the accused are present, sometimes anxious, sometimes mocking. “The cream of the crop,” says Florian, the youngest son, a little later. He is thin, bearded. He is fifteen years younger than his elder. He doesn't look like him, any more than he does like his father. He has been wondering about his parentage for a long time, hoping to do a paternity test. “Would it be a relief to learn that you are not his son?” », asks his advisor, Me Camus. “It would be a relief, yes. Because there is a question of identity behind all that. Unfortunately. Obviously. »

Florian had doubts about his father. He describes Dominique Pelicot's nervousness when he saw his son using Mazan's computer to print coloring pages for the children. This address, used one day: “fetiche45”. “I said to him, 'What? But you can't have a normal email?” He told me “No but you understand, it’s for bicycle wheels on the right corner”. In the last few years, I noticed that my father got angry more quickly. He is imposing, when I was a child he scared me. But I didn't pay attention to it. »

“What are the instructions?” »

There was this day, too, when his ex-wife reported to him a conversation that she overheard between Dominique Pelicot and one of her grandsons: it was about playing doctor, the child refused . Florian says he blames himself for not having immediately spoken to his parents: his brother and his sister-in-law. The question torments the family of knowing what the grandchildren have experienced.

Apparently, Florian continues, his parents formed an exemplary couple – a couple who had been through everything: infidelity, “money problems”. “When we learn what is happening, this divide, this man, how do we construct ourselves? What are the instructions for use? How do we do it? What is the legacy you leave us? » “It's not easy to be called Pelicot,” he said later, “but I want, thanks to this trial, our children and our grandchildren to one day be proud to bear this name. »

Not Dominique's, but Gisèle's. “If my mother became the icon she is today,” continues Florian, “it’s not to parade around in gala evenings. What this implies is everyone's responsibility. And to take responsibility, you have to be in the truth. If you actually have a little humanity, dignity, he adds, turning towards the box, tell Caroline the truth. You have nothing left to lose where you are. And then that’s not what you told me: “We make choices, we take the tree with its fruits?” »

“An absolute drama”

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Kangaroo of the day

Answer

Gisèle Pelicot has become an icon, it's true. Whose name is spread all over the walls of Avignon. Whose gentle and determined face became that of the trial. Monday, she listens without saying a word to her children on the stand. His sons, first of all. And then her daughter Caroline who, her voice a little trembling, says that she is “the big one forgotten” by the audience. “During the first month of this trial,” says Caroline, “I realized that I had thought so much about my mother that I found myself a little apart, invisible. When I was shown these photos on November 3, 2020 (images of her asleep, in underwear, Editor's note), I knew that I was sedated to be abused by Dominique. Gisèle was raped, certainly, under chemical submission, certainly, but the only difference that exists between her and me is the existence of tangible and implacable proof. For me, this is an absolute tragedy. »

Caroline created an association, M'dors pas, and tries to keep it alive. “For me, this trial is not just the trial of Gisèle Pelicot,” she said again. This is the chemical submission trial in France, which we don't hear much about. It’s taking shape, but at what cost? At the cost of my nights, my mental health, my survival, my personal restoration. But I won't give up. I will remain committed until the end, as long as we have not made progress on this ground. » She returns to her place: somewhere near her mother, her brothers and her sisters-in-law – in the middle of a shattered family.