51 accused of rape face their only victim: the unthinkable trial of the Dominique Pélicot case opens Monday in Avignon

Dominique Pélicot, âgé de 72 ans, un criminel sexuel hors du commun. Document Midi Libre – François Barrère

Between 2013 and 2020, this pensioner above all suspicion drugged his wife to offer her the night in their villa in Mazan, near Carpentras, to dozens of strangers who raped her, while her husband filmed and photographed. The trial, which will also be that of the very underestimated practice of chemical submission, will last until December 20 before the criminal court of Vaucluse.

They have not seen each other for almost four years, and their reunion, Monday September 2 in Avignon, promises to be terrible. At 9am, in a criminal court in Vaucluse that has been completely reorganized for this exceptional trial, Dominique Pélicot, a 72-year-old retiree, will face the gaze of Gisèle, 72, his ex-wife, who discovered after almost fifty years of marriage that her husband was an extraordinary sexual criminal.

Sleeping pills hidden in food

She was unwittingly his plaything and prey, delivered, unconscious because of the sleeping pills he hid in his food, to dozens of other men, who raped her in their marital bedroom in their villa in Mazan, near Carpentras, while her husband filmed and photographed these crimes, taking enormous pleasure in them.

“It's a tsunami. I took a TGV. I feel dirty. When I take a shower, I spend a long time in it, because I need to wash myself, when I think about these men who rape a dead woman” she will later tell the judge.

A website dedicated to all sexual deviations

And this tsunami swept away, in the wake of the investigation by the Avignon and Montpellier PJ, 50 other families, stunned to learn that their father, their husband, their brother, had participated in these acts, after having prepared them, discussed them and meticulously developed them on a website devoted to all sexual excesses, under the guise of libertinism. Coco.fr, then coco.gg, on which no moderation was exercised, could only be closed thanks to European judicial cooperation on June 25, 2024. According to the Paris prosecutor's office, it was then the target of more than 23,000 procedures for cases of rape, sexual assault or pedophilia.

83 rape scenes, 11 suspects have not been identified

There will therefore be 50 of them, alongside Dominique Pelicot, to be judged for these aggravated rapes suffered by Gisèle between 2013 and 2020, and which have not all been solved. In total, 83 rape scenes, involving 64 men, were found in the computer archives of the computers, hard drives and mobile phones of Dominique Pélicot, who kept everything, to better enjoy them alone, at home, later.

Eleven suspects could not be identified, two died before their arrest, one is on the run in Morocco. The other fifty, some of whom abused Gisèle several times, were all imprisoned, before some were placed under judicial supervision.

Firefighter, journalist, prison guard or unemployed

They are between 26 and 74 years old, most of them were not known to the justice system, and they constitute a disturbing sample of the French male population, with the common point of an attraction to sex pushing them to be unfaithful or to spend a lot of time on the internet, to lose all reference between pornographic sites and libertine forums. We find a fire officer, whom Dominique Pélicot insisted on filming in uniform, and who accepted, nurses, shopkeepers, a former prison guard, a journalist, truck drivers, employees, unemployed people. Eighteen appear in custody, including two for another cause, thirty-three will arrive free at the hearing. All face twenty years of criminal imprisonment.

Some have admitted the facts, others claim to have been trapped by a couple's game assumed and shared, in which Gisèle pretended to be asleep.

“I put her to sleep, I offered her and I filmed”

“Dominique Pélicot wants to fight the statements of those who claim that Madame could be an accomplice, consenting, and an actress in this game” insists her Marseille lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro. “Since the beginning of his police custody, he has been in the same defense logic, which is to assume everything. I put her to sleep, I offered her, and I filmed. He assumes his responsibility, and tells the other accused to assume theirs. These double-life profiles exist for many, he is not an isolated profile.”

Held in solitary confinement for four years, with only his lawyer visiting, Dominique Pélicot says he has thought a lot about his actions and his journey, citing rapes he suffered at the age of nine as the tipping point for his behavioral excesses. But the dark side of this character who has so far passed under the judicial radar seems potentially immense.

Indicted since for two cold cases including a murder

Since his arrest, after being caught in a supermarket in Carpentras filming under the skirts of customers, he has been indicted for a murder accompanied by rape and an attempted rape, committed in Paris in 1991 and in Villeparisis (Seine-et-Marne) in 1999, where a chemical product to put his victims to sleep had already been used.

And the career of this man who was a real estate agent in the Paris region, then an electrician, is now being scrutinized by the cold-case center in Nanterre, in search of other possible criminal connections.

“How do you expect me to recover from something like this ?” Gisèle Pélicot wondered during the investigation.

Raising awareness of the little-known practice of chemical submission

She is supported by her children, and in particular Caroline Darian, creator of a site to raise awareness of the dangers associated with the practice of chemical submission for sexual purposes, which is largely unknown and illustrated in November 2023 by the indictment of Senator Joël Guerriau. She is also counting on this trial to achieve this, having finally decided not to request a closed hearing, so that silence no longer protects the 51 men who raped her, without her having suspected it for a moment.

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