A French woman whose husband is accused of inviting men to rape her testifies in court

Content warning: This story contains descriptions of alleged sexual violence. Reader discretion is advised.

A woman who was allegedly drugged by her now ex-husband so that she could be raped while unconscious by other men testified Thursday that her world collapsed when police uncovered the years of alleged abuse.

Speaking in a calm and clear voice, Gisèle Pélicot detailed to the court in the southern French city of Avignon the horror of discovering that her former spouse systematically filmed the suspected rapes by dozens of men — storing thousands of images that police investigators later found.

“It’s unbearable,” she testified. “I have so much to say that I don’t always know where to start.”

Dominique Pélicot, now 71, and 50 other men are standing trial on charges of rape and face up to 20 years in prison. The trial started on Monday and is expected to run until December. Thursday marked the first time that Gisèle Pélicot had testified.

The Associated Press doesn’t generally identify victims of sexual crimes. But Gisèle Pélicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said she accepted that her name be published in the same way that she insisted that the trial be held in public.

She told the court that she hopes her testimony might help spare other women from similar ordeals. She said she pushed for the trial in open court in solidarity with other women who go unrecognized as victims of sexual crimes.

She and her husband of 50 years were living in their family home in a small town in Provence with their three children before her world was torn apart in late 2020.

“I thought we were a close couple,” she told the court.

But a security agent caught her husband taking photos of women’s crotches in a supermarket, leading investigators to search Dominique Pélicot’s phone and computer. They found thousands of photographs and videos of men appearing to rape Gisèle in their home while she appears to be unconscious.

Shocked, she left her husband after police showed her some of the images.

“For me, everything collapses,” she testified. “These are scenes of barbarity, of rape.”

She left with two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together.” Since then, she said, “I no longer have an identity. … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself.”

Police investigators found communications Dominique Pélicot allegedly sent on a messaging website commonly used by criminals, in which he invited men to sexually abuse his wife. The website has been shut down.

Crude details of the alleged abuses, which investigators said began in 2011, and of the elaborate system Pélicot put into place over 10 years have emerged during the trial.

Men invited to the couple’s home had to follow certain rules — they could not talk loudly, had to remove their clothes in the kitchen, could not wear perfume nor smell of tobacco, French media reported.

They sometimes had to wait up to an hour and a half on a nearby parking lot for the drug to take full effect and render Gisèle Pélicot unconscious.

“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” she testified. “They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.”

Because Dominique Pélicot videotaped the alleged rapes, police were able to track down — over a period of two years — a majority of the 72 suspects they were seeking.

Besides Pélicot, 50 other men, aged 22 to 70, are standing trial. Several defendants are denying some of the accusations against them, alleging they were manipulated by Pélicot.

Over the next few months, the defendants will appear in small groups before a panel of five judges, with Pélicot scheduled to speak next week. Psychologists, psychiatrists and computer experts will also testify.

Vaux-Montagny reported from Lyon, France