Avignon monster who drugged wife to be raped by 50 men was inspired by nurse who posted disturbing photo of unconscious partner and bragged about drugging her for sex, court hears

Faced with the need to find a fulfilling hobby after their workdays, some men take up gardening or golf.

Dominique Pelicot found another way to spend his free time in the Provençal village of Mazan: he invited other men to rape his sleeping wife, Gisèle.

With breathtaking insouciance, the so-called Monster of Mazan put forward this reason yesterday in court to explain why he committed the ultimate act of treason.

During his working life – as an electrician and real estate agent – ​​he always had his “nose to the grindstone”, he says, but after retiring at 60 he felt “completely idle” and began frequenting perverse internet chat rooms where he came up with the idea for his twisted plan.

In one such online foray, about 13 years ago, a nurse posted a compromising photo of his unconscious wife and bragged about drugging her for sex, while describing the type of tranquilizers he used and the most effective dosage.

Shortly after, Pelicot copied the scheme by slipping these same pills into Gisèle’s dinner, taking the perverse game to the extreme by inviting other men to rape her.

The Avignon court heard how his decade-long campaign of rape put Ms Pelicot’s life in danger. While in a daze, she had a car accident and could have drowned in the swimming pool at their chalet in Mazan, her lawyer said.

Pelicot also allowed her to be raped six times by an HIV-positive man who did not use a condom.

Witnessing this “spectacle of decline” and accompanying her to her medical appointments for unexplained memory loss, was he not led to consider stopping the rapes, insisted Ms. Pelicot’s lawyer.

“I saw her suffering, but the addiction was stronger,” he replied, claiming that the HIV-positive man had shown him a false negative test result.

He added: “I betrayed his trust. I should have stopped much sooner, or even never started. But it was like I was dragging someone else behind me, and I just couldn’t stop.”

Yesterday, Ms Pelicot listened with evident disbelief as the father of her three children admitted to what another lawyer called “one of the worst crimes ever committed in France”.

Since his arrest, she had waited four agonizing years for him to come before her and explain why he had allowed dozens of strangers to defile her. On this day, he would have to answer for himself.

Yet if Pelicot was intimidated by the prospect of confronting the woman he had delivered into the hands of like-minded deviants, if he felt contrite for having allowed them to use him “like a garbage bag,” he had a strange way of showing it.

True, he sometimes wept as he begged – probably in vain – his wife and family to “forgive the unforgivable.” But mostly he felt pity for himself as he offered a litany of apologies for his downfall and worked to ensure that, whatever sentence he faced, his 50 co-defendants would be sentenced with him.

After delaying the trial to receive treatment for a urinary tract infection, Pelicot limped into the stuffy Avignon courtroom with a cane and wrapped in a gray wool jersey and a white scarf.

Unlike his wife, who had stood proudly before the five judges during her testimony, he was allowed to lie on a chair in the dock, placing a microphone on his stomach.

“Good morning, Mr. President, and good morning to everyone,” he began his speech, in the tone of an old talk show host. “Yes, I acknowledge the facts of the case in their entirety.”

Then, presumably to gain sympathy, he recounted a series of alleged traumas that had marred his formative years; he entered the room as his brutal father tied his mother’s hands behind her back and abused her.

Was sexually assaulted by a hospital nurse when he was nine years old.

He witnessed the rape of a disabled girl by her co-workers on a building site when he was an apprentice at the age of 14.

“One is not born perverted, one becomes perverted,” he remarked almost haughtily.

All these events were forgotten at the age of 17, when he met the “beautiful” Giselle, he said.

“I was crazy about her. She was the one who meant the most to me. I loved her very much for 40 years and I loved her very much for ten years. But I will always love her.”

I’m going to die like this. I’ve ruined everything. I’ve lost everything and I have to pay.

Discussing their sex life, Pelicot admitted that he was “always too demanding” and “had trouble doing without it” – problems that worsened after they retired to Mazan and his wife often returned alone to the Paris region to look after their grandchildren.

“There was a terrible lack when she was away,” he said, claiming that was when his “addiction” took over and “everything went terribly wrong.”

That’s when he got the idea to emulate the online chat room nurse who had introduced him to “chemical submission,” he said. “She showed me things I thought were impossible … and it was a real leap forward.”

Pelicot admitted to taking some pleasure in filming the rapes, but said he did so mainly to avoid blackmail from the men he invited to his home.

But towards the end, his debauchery began to backfire on him. Some men would follow his wife when she went shopping.

“If you don’t let me (rape her), I’ll come and talk to her during the day,” he said, after a man threatened him.

At that point, Pelicot said, he was so desperate that he considered committing suicide by driving into a tree.

Instead, he deliberately got himself arrested for taking upskirt photos of women shopping, knowing that the police would investigate his business and discover the rapes.

Several defendants claim that Ms. Pelicot was actually awake when they had sex with her and that she consented as part of a swingers game. Pelicot strongly denied this yesterday. “I am a rapist like

all the accused present in this room,

he said.

He also denied a lawyer’s accusation that he was “trying to look like a superhero” in an act of “bravado” intended to save his wife’s reputation – and in doing so “sacrificing” the other defendant.

“I didn’t take anyone. They all agreed to come to my house. I didn’t handcuff them to force them to come. The tripod (that he used to film the attacks) was there, in plain sight.”

During his four years in detention awaiting trial, Pelicot said he came close to suicide at times. He even attempted suicide after receiving death threats from a fellow inmate (on Saturday, the Daily Mail revealed that a photo of a coffin had been slipped under his cell door).

“Today, I don’t want to die anymore.

I want to fight, I want to prove, I want to educate myself in prison, which I was not able to do when I was a child.

he said.

The Monster of Mazan certainly found an eloquent answer when asked how he felt about being the protagonist of one of the biggest trials in France. “If I were a monument, then I would be a very sad monument, and

“I don’t invite anyone to come and visit me. I don’t have that pretension,” he said.

When the judge gave Ms Pelicot the opportunity to express her feelings as a result of his remarks, she said she found it all “difficult to listen to”.

She left the field to resounding applause from her supporters.

When the day of judgment was over, Pelicot limped pathetically back to his cell.

Additional reporting by Rory Mulholland.