‘You’re like me – you want rape mode’: Monster’s wicked messages

‘You’re like me – you like rape mode’. 

That is just one of a torrent of depraved messages sent by Dominique Pelicot to dozens of men he invited to sexually abuse his wife Gisele – each episode of which he meticulously curated and catalogued over a period of nine years.  

Now, almost four years to the day since he was arrested for filming up the skirts of female shoppers in a supermarket, the 71-year-old Frenchman is finally sitting before a judge – along with fifty other men who leapt at his dark invitation.

Mr Pelicot is currently standing trial in the French city of Avignon close to his home in Mazan for orchestrating the sick rape ring in which he used an online chat room entitled ‘Without her knowing’ to source a slew of ‘recruits’ to take part in his twisted fantasies. 

Police uncovered more than 20,000 photos and images of Gisele being sexually assaulted by a total of 72 strangers – 50 of whom have been identified and are also on trial – as she lay comatose in bed having been drugged by her husband. 

It was from those officers in 2020, almost a decade after her torturous ordeal began in 2011, that Gisele learned the dark truth.

For years she had witnessed her health deteriorating, her worsening memory loss leading her to believe she was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease while she battled what seemed to be a growing abundance of gynaecological problems. 

Court documents previously revealed the now 72-year-old Gisele told the judge how she felt when she discovered the real cause of her physical and mental torment.  

‘He disgusts me. I feel dirty, defiled, betrayed. It was a tsunami, I was hit by a high-speed train,’ she was reported as saying. 

Gisele’s appearance in court on Monday for the first day of the trial was a testament to her bravery and desire to see her abusers brought to justice.

The heinous nature of the case meant that she was granted anonymity and the right to have the trial behind closed doors – but ‘that’s what her attackers would have wanted’, her lawyer Antoine Camus said.

Presiding judge Roger Arata announced yesterday that all the hearings would be public after Gisele waived her right to anonymity and called for ‘complete publicity until the end’ of the court case. 

But she will also be forced to relive her horrific ordeal over and over again by viewing footage and images of the rapes she suffered in the presence of the men being tried for conducting that abuse. 

Including her husband, a total of 51 men are accused of aggravated rape – the biggest number of defendants to have been tried together in recent years, certainly in their region and possibly anywhere in France. 

Eighteen of those men remain in custody and were stuffed into the dock yesterday as the trial began. 

Another 32 who were granted bail also attended in the well of the court, though one failed to appear and is now being hunted by police. 

Mr Pelicot has already admitted to many of the crimes of which he is accused.

In previous hearings, he told investigators that he gave his wife powerful tranquilisers to ensure she was unconscious and explained how he took a range of precautions to prevent her or their family from discovering the dark deeds.

Mr Pelicot imposed strict rules on each of the men he invited to rape his wife: Park nearby and walk to the house; do not wear perfume, smoke or drink; cut and clean nails; run hands under hot water before touching her skin; and withdraw at the slightest sign that she could be disturbed. 

Mr Pelicot’s lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro, said the defendant is ready to face ‘his family and his wife’.

‘He is ashamed of what he did, it is unforgivable. My client’s line of conduct is that he recognises what he did and there has not been an ounce of protest since the beginning.’

The same, however, cannot be said for the other 50 men on trial in Avignon.  

The accused rapists are aged between 26 and 72 include a forklift driver, a fire brigade officer, a company boss and a journalist. Some are single, others married or divorced, and some are family men.

Some appeared in court bedraggled-looking, sporting ponytails, earrings and beards and dressed casually; others were more clean-cut.

Their defence has been that they simply helped a libertine couple live out its fantasies, and their lawyers have suggested the defendants were lured into a trap and had no knowledge that Gisele was an unwilling participant. 

‘We are not dealing with habitual rapists,’ one defence lawyer who represents four of the accused told MailOnline. 

‘They agreed to go (to the Pelicots’ house) and take their responsibilities. But they did not have the impression or at all the intention of going to rape – otherwise they wouldn’t have gone.

Another lawyer said: ‘They went without knowing the trap that was set for them, maybe because they didn’t ask the right questions – they didn’t realise anything.’

But Mr Pelicot told investigators they were all aware Gisele had been drugged without her knowledge before they proceeded to assault her. 

He insisted to prosecutors that only three men left the house quickly after arriving, while all others went ahead with the abuse, some returning to rape her as many as six times.

Ms Zavarro told French press yesterday that her client was not contesting the charges brought against him but wants his co-defendants to recognise their involvement in the crimes.

Mr Pelicot, who said he was raped by a male nurse when he was nine, is ready to face his comeuppance for masterminding the skin-crawling rape operation. 

But this trial may not be his last. 

The defendant has also been charged with a 1991 murder and rape, which he denies, and an attempted rape in 1999, to which he admitted after DNA testing.

Experts said the man does not appear to be mentally ill, but reportedly concluded that had a need to feel ‘all-powerful’ over the female body in assessments included in court documents. 

Meanwhile, Mr Pelicot will also face questions related to indecent images found on his computer of his own daughter Caroline Darian, who appeared in court alongside her two siblings to support her mother Gisele yesterday. 

The Pelicots’ adult children all told investigators that they had no reason to suspect their father had committed such heinous acts against their mother prior to his arrest.

Their eldest son said nothing in his father’s behaviour suggested any deviance and that ‘he had always fulfilled his role as a father’, while Caroline spoke fondly of her father’s presence in her life as a young girl. 

But the dark revelation of their father’s deeds plunged the family into chaos, and set Caroline down a new path.

In 2022, she published a book entitled ‘I Stopped Calling You Papa’ telling the story of how she came to learn of her father’s crimes and their devastating effect on the family. 

She also founded an association called ‘Don’t Put Me To Sleep’ which aims to raise awareness and campaign against drug induced crimes and sexual abuse. 

Caroline this morning was forced to leave the courtroom when she was confronted with evidence that Mr Pelicot had a folder of indecent images of her in her childhood stashed in his trove of abuse. 

The shocking trial is due to last until December 20.