Dominique Pélicot admitted in court on Tuesday that he and the other 50 defendants facing trial are guilty of rape after the French man was accused of drugging his wife, raping her, and recruiting other men to rape her as well as she lay unconscious.
If convicted, he will be spending 20 years in jail. According to Le Parisien, Dominique Pélicot told the court in Avignon during his first testimony that the other men involved knew what they were getting into.
“Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,″ the 71-year-old said on Tuesday while seated in a wheelchair. “They all knew her condition before they came. They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”
However, most of the defendants in the case, ranging from 26 to 73 years, denied that they were fully aware of the situation. They claimed that they thought the couple had consented to having sexual encounters with them. Some are even accusing Dominique of manipulation. The BBC reports that 15 out of the 50 have joined Dominique to plead guilty to the charges.
The victim in all of this is Gisèle Pélicot, a 72-year-old mother of three who had been married to Dominique Pélicot for 50 years. Authorities believe that during their time together, Gisèle had been raped 92 times by more than 80 men who work professionally as soldiers, masons, firefighters, prison guards, and so on.
The woman, who is now regarded as a symbol of courage in France for fighting against sexual violence, had been unaware of the whole thing until the police started investigating her husband in 2020 after he was caught filming up a woman’s skirt in a supermarket.
Police discovered thousands of incriminating photos and videos that had been meticulously organized into folders on Dominique’s computer. According to authorities, some were of Gisèle and some were of her daughter too.
During the public trial, Gisèle expressed that she never imagined her ex-husband, whom she trusted completely, would be capable of the act.
“How is it possible that in 50 years of communal life, one can live next to someone who hides his life so well? This is scary,” she added.