‘It’s an endurance race’: Eight new defendants must take their stand as mass rape trial resumes in France

AVIGNON (France), November 4 – The trial of a Frenchman who recruited dozens of strangers to rape his drugged wife at their home resumes today, with the cases of eight new suspects to be examined in court.

The case against Dominique Pelicot, 71, and 50 other co-defendants aged 26 to 74 has sparked outrage and protests since it opened on September 2 in the southern city of Avignon.

Refusing to be ashamed and demanding that the trial be open to the public, his ex-wife Gisele Pelicot, also 71, has become a feminist heroine in France and beyond.

The court has already interrogated 36 suspects, including Pelicot himself, and after a week’s break will begin questioning another eight co-suspects today.

Antoine Camus, one of Gisele Pelicot’s lawyers, said the international attention has given his client the strength to carry on.

“It is an endurance race, but she obviously remains ready for the fight and determined to see it through, because she has also been lifted by this wave of support in France and abroad,” he told AFP.

“She very often receives many stories that cheer her up and help her with this marathon, which she is not completing just for herself.”

The abuse came to light after police arrested Dominique Pelicot in 2020 for filming women’s skirts at a local supermarket.

He has admitted to raping his then-wife Gisele Pelicot between 2011 and 2020 and enlisting dozens of people to join him, painstakingly documenting the abuse in thousands of images that investigators found on his hard drives.

Driver, cleaning lady, HIV positive man

But his co-defendants, most of whom face 20 years in prison for aggravated rape, have largely maintained they had no idea it was rape.

They said they thought they were participating in the sex game of a casual couple.

“It is very tiring for Gisele Pelicot to hear almost systematically the same explanations from the accused,” Camus said. “That was the victim of rape ‘accidental’, rape ‘by error of judgement’ or ‘unwilling’ rape.”

The next eight men to be cross-examined from today include a 36-year-old truck driver, a 31-year-old worker, a 36-year-old cleaner and a 42-year-old restaurant manager.

Among them is a 50-year-old software engineer accused of plotting to imitate Dominique Pelicot’s methods on his own wife.

An HIV-positive single man, now 63 years old, has been accused of visiting the Pelicot home in the southern city of Mazan six times to abuse Gisele Pelicot, not once using a condom.

The court will also examine the case of a 30-year-old, the only co-accused to be tried in absentia.

‘Abused his own daughter’

Finally, an unemployed 41-year-old has been accused of raping Gisele Pelicot in 2019, with the complicity of her then husband, at the home of the couple’s daughter in the Paris region.

He denied committing rape on the first day of the trial.

The couple’s two sons and daughter, who goes by the pseudonym Caroline Darian, have regularly appeared at the trial to support their mother.

But Darian was not present at some of the more recent hearings.

In late October, after the trial had reached its halfway point, she announced on Instagram that she was going to a clinic for a few days to recharge and “be able to sleep again.”

Darian, who wrote a 2022 book “Et j’ai cesse de t’appeler papa” (“And I stopped calling you daddy”), has campaigned for awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

She left the courtroom in tears early in the trial when the presiding judge explained how her father also had naked photo montages of her on his computer.

“I am also a victim of Dominique P,” Darian wrote on Instagram.

“He drugged me without my knowledge and without a doubt abused his own and only daughter.”

The trial will last until December 20. –AFP