Pelicot’s words
“I would like to begin – said Dominique Pelicot, 72 years old, Gisèle’s ex-husband – by paying homage to the courage of my ex-wife”. «I ask you – continued the man who thought up and organized the rapes between 2011 and 2020 by dozens and dozens of people recruited on the web – and the rest of my family, to accept my apologies. I regret what I did, making them suffer for 4 years (from the date on which the facts emerged, ed.), I ask them for forgiveness.” Gisèle, also 72, listened without batting an eyelid, even when her ex-husband declared, in his last opportunity to speak in court, that he had told “the complete truth” in these 14 weeks of debate. Stating that his only desire is to “be forgotten” due to the “shame” he feels within himself. “I have built myself an armor – he said – otherwise you will die in prison”.
Gisele Pelicot drugged by her husband for years and raped by 50 men: “I fight for all of them, we shouldn’t be ashamed of ourselves”
The 50 co-accused also followed him closely, representing only a portion of the men recruited to rape his wife (others were not identified). Some did it several times, returning to the Pelicot house as many as five or six times. Some of them defended themselves by accusing him of having deceived them too, making them believe that he agreed with his wife in venturing into new experiences and that everything took place while she “pretended” to sleep. But what was listening to Dominique Pelicot were above all the five magistrates who will have to judge him.
