Pelicot rape case


Over a period of nine years, from July 2011 to October 2020, Dominique Pelicot, a man from Mazan in south-eastern France, repeatedly drugged and raped his wife, Gisèle Pelicot, and invited male strangers through the internet to rape her while she was unconscious. Gisèle, who was unaware of the abuse being perpetrated against her, was raped at least 92 times by 72 different men while her husband filmed and photographed them. The crimes were discovered in September 2020 after Dominique was arrested for taking upskirt photographs of women in a supermarket; the ensuing police investigation uncovered hundreds of images on his computer equipment of men raping his wife.
The trial of Dominique and 50 other men accused of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault began in Avignon on 2 September 2024, and concluded on 16 December, with verdicts delivered on 19 December. All were convicted, with Dominique receiving the maximum 20-year prison term. Dominique was also found guilty of taking indecent images of his daughter and two daughters-in-law, and the rape of the wife of co-defendant Jean-Pierre Maréchal, who was charged with drugging and raping his own wife, and not Gisèle.
Gisèle's decision to waive her right to anonymity and insistence on a public trial attracted worldwide media attention and admiration. The trial drew attention to drug-facilitated sexual assault and issues around consent.

Background

Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot were both born in 1952. Gisèle Pelicot was born in Villingen, in what was then West Germany, to a French military family, and moved to France at the age of five. Her father served in the French Armed Forces. Although she lost her mother at the age of nine, she later described her childhood as happy and stable.
Dominique Pelicot was born in Quincy-sous-Sénart in the Île-de-France region and spent part of his youth in Luçay-le-Mâle in central France, where his parents worked as janitors in a rehabilitation centre. Accounts presented during legal proceedings describe his upbringing as troubled; he reported that his father was abusive toward his mother, that he was molested by a male nurse at the age of nine, and that, as a teenager, he witnessed a gang rape. Dominique later attributed aspects of his behaviour to these early traumas. After two years of secondary education, he left school to begin an apprenticeship as an electrician, starting work at the age of 13.
Gisèle and Dominique met in 1971, when they were both 18 years old, and married in April 1973. Gisèle worked in administration at Électricité de France, while Dominique worked as an electrician and estate agent and later founded several small businesses that were unsuccessful. The couple lived in the Paris region and had three children.
Their marriage experienced difficulties in the mid-1980s, including extramarital relationships on both sides. After periods of separation and reconciliation, they remained together. In 2001, they divorced for financial reasons linked to Dominique’s business debts but continued to live together, remarrying in 2007 under a different matrimonial regime.
At the time the crimes later became public, acquaintances described the Pelicots as a close family. In court, Gisèle characterised their family life as “perfect”, and their eldest son said his peers had viewed his father positively.
In 2013, the Pelicots retired to Mazan, in the Vaucluse department of south-eastern France. Gisèle joined a local choir, while Dominique pursued cycling, home maintenance and other leisure activities. They were regularly visited by their children and grandchildren and spent time with friends in the area.
Before the crimes were uncovered, Gisèle was unaware that Dominique had been fined for upskirting women near Paris in 2010. Reports indicated that in later years he spent considerable time viewing pornography online. He attributed this to frustrations within his relationship, citing differences in sexual preferences. Around 2010–2011, an online acquaintance shared images and instructions related to similar conduct; Dominique later stated that he followed this advice.

Pattern of abuses

Dominique's abuse of Gisèle started after she was prescribed lorazepam, an anxiolytic drug, which made her drowsy. Gisèle only took it for a short while, but Dominique took advantage of this by secretly adding pills to her food and drinks, causing her to lose consciousness. He obtained additional Temesta from his doctor; he had been prescribed 450 pills in one year alone, and was also prescribed Viagra.
While Gisèle was unconscious, Dominique committed sexual acts, such as anal sex, which his wife had not wished to participate in, or dressed her in lingerie she refused to wear. He filmed and photographed the abuse originally for his own gratification, but quickly began to share the videos and photos online. He started soliciting men to rape his wife on a forum called à son insu, hosted on Coco, an online chat with no moderation, founded by Isaac Steidl. This website, which moved its domain registration from France to Guernsey after Dominique's arrest and was eventually shut down in June 2024, was cited in more than 23,000 reports of criminal activity since its founding in 2003. Dominique claimed on the forum that he and his wife shared a fetish for men having sex with her while she was asleep, and did not state outright that he drugged and abused her without her knowledge. Dominique used the chatroom to invite other men to rape his wife. He selected his co-perpetrators by communicating with them first on Coco's private messaging system, then on Skype where he detailed how they would proceed. Skype messages were found in which he boasted of drugging his wife.
The men were given strict instructions to, for example, avoid smelling of fragrance or cigarette smoke, in case it alerted Gisèle to their presence. Dominique asked them to avoid "brusque gestures", as he "hated brutality". No money was exchanged. The men were not required to use condoms, and Gisèle was found to have four sexually transmitted infections after the abuse came to light. One rapist was HIV-positive; however, he was being treated and had an undetectable viral load, so he did not expose her to the virus.
The first documented rape committed by Dominique with another man occurred on July 23, 2011 at the Pelicots' home in Villiers-sur-Marne, near Paris. The co-perpetrator was never identified. By the time the Pelicots retired and settled in Mazan, Dominique had perfected his modus operandi: he kept his tranquilisers in a shoebox in their garage, switching brands because the first was too salty to be added to Gisèle's food and drink without her noticing it. Dominique kept around 300 videos and pictures on a hard drive in a folder called "Abuses". Investigations showed that the number of rape videos had increased from 2016. In the videos, Dominique made obscene comments. Sex toys were sometimes used on Gisèle. In some videos, she appeared to choke when the men thrust their penises into her mouth. During his trial, Dominique said that he had raped his wife two or three times a week, either alone or with someone else.
Dominique also communicated online with men who said they were drugging and abusing their own partners. He discussed visiting them to participate in their crimes, though this did not take place. Several of these men were identified and charged in separate cases. Dominique convinced another man, Jean-Pierre Maréchal, to replicate his pattern by sedating and raping his own wife. Maréchal never went to Mazan, but instead invited Dominique at his home in Drôme. Dominique travelled there a dozen times between 2015 and 2020 to rape Maréchal's wife. On several occasions, he gave Maréchal sedatives for his next visit. Half of their attempts were unsuccessful, because Maréchal had miscalculated the doses. The media later called Maréchal Pelicot's "disciple", or "clone".
The abuse took a significant toll on Gisèle's health. She lost weight and her hair started to fall out. She experienced memory loss and at times spoke incoherently, to the extent that she worried that she might have Alzheimer's disease or a brain tumor. She only felt better when she was away from Mazan, which never raised her suspicions. She visited a number of doctors, but was always accompanied by her husband, who blamed her symptoms on exhaustion caused by looking after their grandchildren. None of the doctors suspected that she was being drugged.
Psychiatrists who later examined Dominique diagnosed him as suffering from a range of sexual and emotional disorders that included antisocial personality disorder with complete lack of empathy, egomania and several paraphilias among which sadism, exhibitionism, "obsessive fantasies" akin to necrophilia and an "abnormal sexual deviancy" that combined candaulism, voyeurism and somnophilia. One psychiatrist said that Dominique had a split personality that worked like "a partitioned computer disk": "We either have the 'normal Mr Pelicot' or the other Mr Pelicot at night, in the bedroom." A psychologist said that Dominique had trouble accepting the harm he had done, instead complaining that the trial had "destroyed his life", and that if he had not been arrested, he "would still be happy, and she too – everything would have continued the same way".

Arrest and investigation

Dominique was arrested on 12 September 2020 after he had been apprehended by a security guard for upskirting women using his mobile phone at an E.Leclerc supermarket in Carpentras, near Mazan. He was interviewed by Dr. Laurent Layet, a psychiatrist who was called in to evaluate him. During the interview, Dr. Layet became suspicious of Dominique's casual attitude and how easily he dismissed his crime. Detecting a "dissonance" in his behavior and suspecting that Dominique was hiding something, he told the police that the case should be investigated further.
Dominique was released on bail pending investigation of his two mobile phones, laptop, and other digital equipment that had been seized at his home. One of the police officers had the idea to check the Skype application on one of Dominique's phones to see whether he had sent the images to someone else: he immediately found a conversation between Pelicot and one "Rasmus" that alluded to a woman being drugged with anxyolitics.
Even after his first arrest, Dominique continued to invite men to rape his wife. The last abuse occurred on 22 October 2020: the man, whose alias was "le motard", could not be identified. On a USB stick connected to Dominique's computer, investigators found a folder called "abuses" containing more than 20,000 images and videos of his unconscious wife being raped. The videos had been meticulously filed with explicit titles and the names of the men.
The investigators later identified 92 separate incidents of rape committed on Gisèle by 72 different men between July 2011 and October 2020. It took the police two years to identify and locate 50 of the perpetrators; the rest remain unidentified. The men were aged between 21 and 68 at the time of the rapes.
Images were also found on Dominique's computer of his daughters-in-law in the shower, which had been taken with a hidden camera, and of his semi-naked daughter Caroline unconscious on a bed as if she had been drugged.