Warning: This article contains mentions of rape and sexual abuse. 

DESPITE having been married for 50 years, with 72-year-old Gisèle Pelicot believing that her husband Dominique was the love of her life, he has done the unthinkable, as revealed in a recent court case in France that may change history.

It was only when the police showed her evidence that Gisèle found out that between 2011 and 2022, her husband and several other men had been raping her in her own bedroom while she was unconscious.

Aside from this, Dominique was also accused of drugging and abusing his daughter Caroline because the police found semi-nude photos of her on his laptop. He denied this and also stated that he never did anything to his grandchildren, either.

At present, Dominique, is being tried in court alongside 50 other men that have been identified to have raped Gisèle. The Guardian, however, reports that since 2011, Dominique is believed to have orchestrated over 200 rapes in total.

The Cut writes that it was in 2013 that Gisèle started feeling ill, experiencing symptoms such as hair and weight loss, as well as significant lapses in her memories that she called “total blackouts.”

She would come to discover that this was a result of her husband crushing sleeping pills up and placing them into her food and drinks. After she would pass out, he would then start to commit these heinous crimes.

“For 50 years, I lived with a man who I would’ve never imagined could be capable of this,” Gisèle said in court.

“I trusted him completely.”

Gisèle and Dominique met when they were 19 and got married at 21. They were together until Gisèle learned of the atrocities Dominique had committed against her.  

Husband admits guilt

Last September, Dominique admitted to drugging and raping his wife while she was asleep, and then recruiting other men to do the same.

France 24 states that Dominique had previously tried different drugs and sleeping pills before starting to use Temesta on his wife in 2015. This would put Gisèle in a deep sleep, and he would then abuse her while in this state.

Later on, Dominique started joining a chatroom called “Without her knowledge,” a website that hosts pornographic material, to look for men willing to come over and rape Gisèle. Over time, he started increasing the doses of sleeping pills he was giving her.

She was unknowingly consuming about three to ten tablets per day. In total, about 780 of these tablets were prescribed up until 2020.

France 24 further reports that, as a result of her husband’s actions, Gisèle’s health started deteriorating rapidly. Her son-in-law, Pierre Peyronnet, even talked about how they had difficulties talking to her because she would often be asleep whenever they would try to get in touch with her. 

When she could speak, she spoke incoherently, as if she were in a daze. 

Later on, when asking doctors about her condition, she would be told that she had symptoms like memory loss, momentary absences, and an inflamed cervix among other gynecological concerns. 

It was only when Dominique was reported to the police for trying to take photos up the skirts of three girls at a grocery store that his actions toward Gisèle were even discovered. 

In court, surrounded by his 50 co-defendants accused of raping Gisèle, Dominique said: “I am a rapist like the others in this room. They all knew, they cannot say the contrary.”

BBC News reports that only 15 of the 50 co-defendants confessed to raping Gisèle, with most saying they only “took parts in sexual acts.”

Some even stated that they believed Gisèle was consenting to these acts, or that her husband had given them the consent to do so. 

A report from BBC News interviewing the people of Mazan, the village where these rapes occurred, has caused great tensions amongst its people.

Since the names of those accused were shared on social media, residents were shocked because of the number of people they recognized on the list. 

More than this, they worried about the fact that not everyone that raped Gisèle had been caught. BBC News noted that out of the estimated 83 people who raped Gisèle, 33 of them have not been caught.

“People don’t know if they can trust their neighbors,” said Isabelle Liversain, a resident of Mazan, who couldn’t help but worry if they were one of them.

“What is your neighbor getting up to behind closed doors?”

Made open to the public

In a brave and selfless act, Gisèle has chosen to waive her right to anonymity, requesting to make the trial open to the public in order for everyone to “look rape straight in the eyes.”

As per Gisèle, shame must change sides from the victims to the perpetrators.

During the trial, it was revealed that Dominique had taken thousands of videos of the men who indulged in sexual acts with his unconscious wife, which were used to track down the 50 co-defendants accused of rape. 

He said that he had filmed these men both for pleasure and for insurance.

The judge, last month, had banned the broadcasting of these videos to the public and the press because he considered them “shocking and indecent,” BBC News reported.

The lawyers of the co-defendants also opposed this, asking what the point of these “revolting” screenings was. 

Gisèle and her lawyers, however, asked for these restrictions to be lifted, and to make these videos available to the public. Aljazeera reports that this was to make an example of those who had abused her, and to deter men from committing similar crimes because they think that they will be able to get away with it. 

To this, one of Gisèle’s lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau, said: “If these same hearings, through their publicity, help prevent other women from having to go through this, then she will find meaning in her suffering.”

This trial has reminded people that rapists are not only monsters lurking in the dark. They live next door to your homes, smile at you as you walk past them down the street, ask you how your day was while going up the office elevator. 

They are all around, “ordinary people” like anyone else, and that is much more terrifying than any monster you can conjure up in your mind. 

France 24 also reports that this case has helped to urge doctors to train more in detecting “chemical submission” or drug-facilitated abuse because, despite the several doctors that Gisèle had visited, none of them had been able to notice what was actually going on. 

Some doctors have even admitted that they knew very little about domestic chemical submission before Gisèle’s case came to light.

As she said during the start of her proceedings, she hoped to speak out so that no other woman would have to endure chemical submission, which lawmaker Sandrine Josso described to be a “blind spot” in the fight against sexual violence.