Monster of Avignon reveals abuse as a baby as rape trial continues

The ‘Monster of Avignon’ returned to court today to tell judges how he was forced to take part in gang-rape, suffered sexual assault by a nurse as a child and witnessed his father abusing a girl as he confessed to allowing strangers to rape his drugged wife.

Dominique Pélicot, 71, sobbed in court as he spoke for the first time about his crimes on Tuesday morning after a period of absence from his trial due to sickness. 

Expressing remorse for his campaign of abuse, in which dozens of men were alleged to have assaulted his wife over a period of ten years, he tried to explain how events in his childhood had perverted him.

‘One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert,’ Mr Pélicot said in his much-awaited testimony, telling judges: ‘I am a rapist, like everyone else in this courtroom. I recognise the facts in their totality.’

Mr Pélicot stood in the dock at the Vaucluse Criminal Court, in Avignon as he faces trial alongside 50 other men, all accused of ‘aggravated rape’ of his wife Gisèle Pélicot, also 71, over a period of ten years. He faces 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Mr Pélicot, sometimes in tears, recounted being raped by a male nurse in hospital when he was 9 years old and then being forced to take part in a gang rape at age 14.

He also spoke of the trauma endured when his parents took a young girl in the family, and witnessing his father’s inappropriate behavior toward her.

‘My father used to do the same thing with the little girl,’ he said. ‘After my father’s death, my brother said that men used to come to our house.’

At 14, he said, he asked his mother if he could leave the house, but ‘she didn’t let me.’

‘I don’t really want to talk about this, I am just ashamed of my father. In the end, I didn’t do any better,’ he said.

‘I still have the smell of semen in my nose,’ he told the court. 

‘But I still had a normal life. A wife, three wonderful children, several grandchildren. And I never touched any of them.’ 

Asked about his feelings toward his wife, Pélicot said she did not deserve what he did.

‘From my youth, I remember only shocks and traumas, forgotten partly thanks to her. She did not deserve this, I acknowledge it,’ he said in tears.

Gisèle Pélicot, standing across the room, faced her former husband across a group of dozens of defendants sitting in between them, and put her sunglasses back on as he spoke.

Later, Dominique Pélicot said, ‘I was crazy about her. She replaced everything. I ruined everything.’

Mr Pélicot’s candid testimony had been delayed until Tuesday after a bout of illness brought on by a kidney stone and urinary infection.

He appeared in court in a wheelchair to finally confront his actions, and accused the dozens of men alleged to have assaulted his wife with him of complicity.

‘Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,’ Mr Pélicot told the court. ‘They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.’

Defendants looked visibly angry as Mr Pélicot attributed blame. 

Detectives have listed a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified.

Of the 83 men involved in the campaign of abuse, 51 aged between 26 and 73 were identified and arrested by the police.

One, still at large, will be judged in absentia. 

Discussing his assessment by psychiatrists, Mr Pélicot maintained that he ‘was not born perverted’. 

He had previously claimed that he was sexually abused as nine year old in hospital and told the court: ‘It was in the dark, I had a bandage and a headache. A guy came and said to me: ‘My name is Basile, do you want some candy?’

‘There were caresses, I felt a moustache, a great deal of pain, I didn’t understand what was happening to me.’ 

‘I only remember shocks and traumas from my youth. She did not deserve this. I admit it,’ he added.

‘I destroyed everything and lost her,’ he said, weeping. 

‘We are not born perverts, we become them. I think that what I have experienced is preponderant in my story. 

‘Even if it is paradoxical, I have never considered my wife as an object. As for pedophilia, I have never wanted that.’

Mr Pélicot faced his wife in court on Tuesday, telling how his life only began to turn around when he met her as a teenager.

‘I was very happy with her,’ said Mr Pélicot. ‘She was the opposite of my mother, who was completely rebellious.

‘We had three children, and grandchildren, whom I never touched.’

He said Gisèle Pélicot ‘did not deserve this.’

At the end of the short statement, Ms Pélicot lowered her head, putting her sunglasses on.

Mr Pélicot previously told psychologists that his wife was to blame for his actions because she refused to go swinging with him.

Psychologist Annabelle Montagne told the court in Avignon that she interviewed Mr Pélicot in December 2020 – a month and a half after he was taken into custody – where he admitted to carrying out the campaign of abuse of his wife Gisele.

‘Pélicot said: ‘My wife and I had a discussion about swinging but she didn’t agree so I drugged her”,’ the psychologist recounted.

To the court, Ms Pélicot said the topic had come up at a nightclub, but she said she ‘didn’t want to get involved’.

Bravely facing her former husband in court on Tuesday as he expressed remorse, Ms Pélicot said: ‘It is difficult to hear it.

‘For fifty years, I lived with a man who I would never have imagined for a single second that he could do these acts. I had complete confidence in this man.’

Mr Pélicot then pleaded for sympathy, saying: ‘I am guilty of what I did.

‘I subjected my wife, my children, my grandchildren to this. I regret what I did. I ask for forgiveness even if it is not forgivable.’ 

As the cross-examination continued on Tuesday, the defendant insisted he ‘still loves’ his ex-wife.

‘I loved her well for 40 years and loved her badly for 10 years,’ said Pélicot. ‘I ruined everything, I lost everything. I should never have done that.’

Mr Pélicot claimed he also ‘still loves’ his three adult children, saying: ‘They are in my heart.’

He even praised his daughter, Caroline Darian, for founding a protest group against so-called ‘chemical submission’ – the drugging of rape victims.

Pélicot also admitted that videoing the crimes against his wife was ‘a part of the pleasure’, but he was glad that most of the men who had sex with his wife had been identified.

‘There is also a measure of reassurance, since today, thanks to [the videos], we can find all those who participated in what went on,’ he said.

Other defendants in court were visibly angry as Pélicot criminalised them all. ‘He manipulated us,’ one shouted.

Mr Pélicot’s testimony is the most important moment so far in a trial that has shocked and gripped the country, and raised new awareness about sexual violence.

Many also hope his testimony will shed some light – to try to understand the unthinkable.

Shuffling into court today, he finally told judges: ‘Today, I maintain that, with the obligations we all have, I am a rapist.’

While he previously confessed to investigators, the court testimony will be crucial for the panel of judges to decide on the fate of some 50 other men standing trial alongside him. 

Many deny having raped Gisèle Pélicot, saying they were manipulated by her then-husband or claiming they believed she was consenting.

Mr Pélicot has been on remand since 2020, when he was first arrested on suspicion of gassing and then raping Ms Pélicot, while inviting men he contacted online to do the same.

She has told the court that she had to get tested for HIV as ‘one man who came [to rape me] six times was seropositive’. 

Asked today by the judge whether she had noticed anything over the period of abuse, she said: ‘No. But one time I didn’t wake up until 6pm and I had no idea what had happened the day before.’ 

Mr Pélicot is facing a jail sentence of up to 20 years, along with all the other defendants.

Last week, psychologists described Mr Pélicot as a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ character who appeared like a normal husband during the day, and then drugged his wife so strangers could rape her at night.

Mr Pélicot is said to have sedated his wife by putting a powerful anxiolytic into her evening dinner. 

All the attacks took place in the couple’s marital home in the town of Mazan, south of France, between 2010 and 2020, police say. 

On Tuesday, he said the campaign of abuse began after he met a nurse who allegedly advised him on which drug to give to his wife.

‘He gave me the dosage,’ said Pélicot. ‘I saw photos of his wife. That was the moment it started. I think about it.’ 

His daughter, Caroline Darian, 46, last week told the court that he was ‘one of the greatest sexual predators’ of recent years.

She said he secretely photographed her in the nude, along with her two sister-in-laws.

Mr Pélicot was first arrested in September 2020 for secretely filming up women’s skirts at a supermarket in Carpentras.

His devices were searched, and there were hundreds of pornographic videos and photos of women.

It was while in custody that Mr Pélicot reported a hard drive, hidden under a printer, which contained a file called ‘Abuses’.

Police uncovered sickening pictures of Ms Darian, and Mr Pélicot’s two daughters-in-laws, in a haul some 200,000 images and videos.

The folder contained the nicknames and telephone numbers of other alleged attackers, together with some 3,800 photos and videos of Gisèle Pélicot being raped, between 2011 and 2020.

Alleged rapists involved in the case include civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers.

In a separate case, Mr Pélicot has been charged with raping and murdering a 23-year-old estate agent in Paris in 1991.

He has admitted one attempted rape in 1999, after DNA testing proved a case against him.

The Avignon aggravated rape case is due to last until December 21.

Fourteen of the other defendants have also admitted rape, while the rest deny any wrongdoing.

Mr Pélicot had been expected to be cross-examined at the Vaucluse Criminal Court in Avignon last week.

But his legal team insisted on Thursday morning that was not well enough to give evidence because of abdominal pain and a suspected bladder infection.

He briefly appeared in court on Wednesday morning, but defence barrister Beatrice Zavarro confirmed on Thursday that he was ‘still ill’ and would not be showing up.

Mr Pélicot had been vomiting and fainting in his prison cell, where he has been on remand since 2020, in between visits to hospital for treatment and tests.

Last Wednesday, the court heard how another man on trial, named only as Jean-Pierre, 63, allegedly learned from Mr Pélicot how to drug and rape his own wife. 

The ‘disciple’ is not among the 51 men on trial for attacking Mrs Pélicot.

The former lorry driver was claimed to have spoken to Mr Pélicot in an online chatroom called ‘Against her knowledge’. 

Mr Pélicot is then alleged to have provided sedatives for ‘Jean-Pierre’ to drug his wife, before travelling to rape her himself. 

Mr Pélicot is alleged to have met Jean-Pierre in the now defunct chatroom, before agreeing to visit him to deliver sedatives and rape his wife with him.

‘Each time that [Pélicot] travelled [there], he provided him with the medication for the next time,’ lead investigator Stéphan Gal told the court.

Mr Pélicot’s lawyer said he had supplied Jean-Pierre with the drugs as many as four times.

Jean-Pierre’s 32-year-old son from another marriage said he felt it a ‘certainty’ his father had been manipulated by Pélicot.

‘I have the firm conviction that had he not met this person, there would never have been any of this,’ he said.