A 72-year-old French woman whose husband has admitted drugging her and inviting dozens of men to rape her over more than a decade has told a court she was treated “like a rag doll” and “sacrificed on the altar of abuse”.
In a calm and clear voice, Gisèle Pellicot, from the southern French city of Avignon, described how her husband Dominique Pellicot, 71, allegedly set up several men to rape her while she was unconscious.
This happened nearly 100 times in their home for nearly a decade, while her husband systematically filmed the suspected rapes and stored thousands of images as well as videos, which were later found by investigators.
“I was sacrificed on the altar of evil… They treated me like a rag doll, a garbage bag… I have no identity now. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to rebuild myself,” she testified, The Independent reports.
He said, “For me, everything collapses. These are scenes of brutality and rape.”
She said she was abused at least six times by someone who knew she was HIV positive.
Testifying about the abuse she suffered between 2011 and 2020, Giselle told the court, “My life was in danger, but nobody stopped me for a second… I was tested for HIV because one man who came six times (to rape me) was seropositive,” the New York Post reported.
The police saved my life
The woman said “the police saved my life” when they searched her husband’s computer in November 2020 after he was caught by a security guard filming up women’s skirts at a supermarket near their home in a village in southern France, The Guardian reports.
Describing the moment investigators first showed her videos of sexual abuse created and filmed by her husband, Gisele Pellicot called it “an explosion, a tsunami.”
“My world is falling apart. For me, everything is falling apart. Everything I have built over 50 years … to be honest, these are horrifying scenes for me,” he said, as Dominique Pellicot listened with his head bowed in court.
While investigating the case, police found a file titled “abuse” on a USB drive connected to Dominique Pellicott’s computer, the report said. Upon searching the drive, officers found nearly 20,000 photos and videos of the woman being raped nearly 100 times.
Crime
According to the police, the accused husband would crush sleeping pills and anti-anxiety drugs and mix them in his wife’s food or drink. He would then contact men through online chat rooms and invite them to rape her.
According to reports, Dominic Pellicot is on trial along with 50 others aged between 26 and 74.
According to The Telegraph, the woman’s husband and 14 other co-accused have admitted to the rape, while 35 men from various walks of life have denied the allegations and claimed that the woman had in one way or the other given consent to promiscuous sex.
