‘I am a rapist,’ admits former husband who invited dozens of men to rape Gisèle Pélicot
WARNING: This article may affect those who have experienced sexual violence or know someone affected by it.
A 71-year-old French man acknowledged in court on Tuesday that over nearly a decade, he was drugging his then-wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her, as well as raping her himself. He pleaded with her, and their three children, for forgiveness.
“Today I maintain that, along with the other men here, I am a rapist,″ Dominique Pelicot told the court. “They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise.”
Dominique Pelicot’s testimony is the most important moment so far in a trial that has shocked and gripped France, and raised new awareness about sexual violence.
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 Pelicot, saying they were manipulated by her then-husband or claiming they believed she was consenting.
Dominique Pelicot admitted to drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her over nearly a decade, begging for his family’s forgiveness, as he told a French court: ‘I am a rapist.’ Gisèle Pelicot waived her legal right to anonymity and said she wanted the trial to be held publicly to alert the public to sexual abuse.
Gisèle Pelicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France for agreeing to waive her anonymity in the case, letting the trial be public and appearing openly in front of the media.
Under French law, the proceedings inside the courtroom cannot be filmed or photographed. Dominique Pelicot is brought to the court through a special entrance inaccessible for the media, because he and some other defendants are being held in custody during the trial. Defendants who are not in custody come to the trial wearing surgical masks or hoods to avoid having their faces filmed or photographed.
After days of uncertainty due to his medical state, Dominique Pelicot appeared in court Tuesday and told judges he acknowledged all the charges against him. His much-awaited testimony was delayed by days after he fell ill, suffering from a kidney stone and urinary infection, his lawyers said.
Dominique Pelicot said he had wanted his wife to participate in partner swaps and her refusal, together with trauma from his youth, had helped to trigger his abusive behaviour.
“It became a perversion, an addiction,” he told the courtroom.
Gisèle Pelicot was in the courtroom during his appearance on the stand and was greeted with applause by spectators when she left during breaks.
‘One is not born a pervert’
Seated in a wheelchair, Pelicot spoke to the court for an hour, from his early life to years of abuse against his now ex-wife. Expressing remorse, his voice trembling and at times barely audible, he sought to explain events that he said scarred his childhood and planted the seed of vice in him.
“One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert,” Pelicot told judges, after recounting, sometimes in tears, being raped by a male nurse in hospital when he was nine years old and then being forced to take part in a gang rape at age 14.
Pelicot also spoke of the trauma endured when his parents took a young girl in the family, and witnessing his father’s inappropriate behaviour 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.”
Crowds took to the streets in France over the weekend to show support for Gisèle Pélicot, whose husband is accused of drugging her and allowing strangers to rape her over several years.
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.
Asked about his feelings toward his wife, Pelicot 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.
At that moment, Gisèle Pelicot, standing across the room, facing him across a group of dozens of defendants sitting in between them, put her sunglasses back on. Later, Dominique Pelicot said, “I was crazy about her. She replaced everything. I ruined everything.”
When asked by one of the lawyers if he thought he could win back his former partner, Dominique Pelicot said: “It is important to have hope. Otherwise, it’s over.”
50 other men standing trial
A security agent caught Pelicot in 2020 filming videos under women’s skirts in a supermarket, according to court documents. Police searched Pelicot’s house and electronic devices, and found thousands of photos and videos of men engaging in sexual acts with Gisèle Pelicot while she appears to lie unconscious on their bed.
With the recordings, police were able to track down a majority of the 72 suspects they were seeking.
Gisèle Pelicot and her husband of 50 years had three children. When they retired, the couple left the Paris region to move into a house in Mazan, a small town in Provence.
When police officers called her in for questioning in late 2020, she initially told them her husband was “a great guy,″ according to legal documents. They then showed her some photos. She left her husband and they are now divorced.
He faces 20 years in prison if convicted. Besides Pelicot, 50 other men, aged 26 to 74, are standing trial.
Bernadette Tessonière, a 69-year-old retiree who lives a half-hour drive from Avignon, where the trial is taking place, arrived outside the courthouse at 7:15 a.m. local time to make sure she would secure a seat in the closely watched case.
“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 said, while standing in a line outside the courthouse. “I don’t have much hope that what he did can be explained, but he is at least going to give some elements.”
For anyone who has been sexually assaulted, there is support available through crisis lines and local support services via the Ending Violence Association of Canada database.
For anyone affected by family or intimate partner violence, there is support available through crisis lines and local support services.
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911.
Published at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 13:24:19 +0000
Sean (Diddy) Combs has been indicted on sex trafficking, racketeering charges
Sean (Diddy) Combs faces federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges in an indictment, unsealed Tuesday, claiming he hit and abused women for over a decade and presided over an empire of sexual crimes.
The music mogul “engaged in a persistent and pervasive pattern of abuse toward women and other individuals,” according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday.
The indictment details allegations dating to 2008 that he abused, threatened and coerced women for years “to fulfil his sexual desires, protect his reputation and conceal his conduct.”
He is accused of inducing female victims and male sex workers into drugged-up, sometimes days-long sexual performances dubbed “Freak Offs” in the indictment, which refers obliquely to an attack on his former girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, that was captured on video.
Combs was arrested late Monday in Manhattan, roughly six months after federal authorities conducting a sex trafficking investigation raided his luxury homes in Los Angeles and Miami. He was due in court Tuesday to face the charges.
Over the past year, Combs has been sued by people who say he subjected them to physical or sexual abuse. He has denied many of those allegations, and his lawyer, Marc Agnifilo, said outside the courthouse Tuesday morning that Combs would plead not guilty and that he would “fight like hell” to try to get his client released from custody.
Of Combs, Agnifilo said: “His spirits are good. He’s confident.”
The indictment describes Combs, 54, as the head of a criminal enterprise that engaged or attempted to engage in activities including sex trafficking, forced labour, interstate transportation for purposes of prostitution, drug offences, kidnapping, arson, bribery and obstruction of justice. He’s accused of striking, punching and dragging women on numerous occasions, throwing objects and kicking them — and enlisting his personal assistants, security and household staff to help him hide it all.
Combs and his associates wielded his “power and prestige” to “intimidate, threaten and lure” women into his orbit, “often under the pretence of a romantic relationship,” the indictment says. It says he then would use force, threats and coercion to get the women to engage with male sex workers in “Freak Offs” — “elaborate and produced sex performances” that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during and often recorded.
More to come.
Published at Tue, 17 Sep 2024 14:28:57 +0000