Dominique Pellicot in rape trial that shocked France: “I regret what I did” | Society

Dominic Pellicott, the man who invited dozens of men to his home to drug and rape his wife over a decade, apologized to his family this Wednesday. “I regret what I did,” he said in his last statement before the Avignon court. “I didn’t know it hurt him so much,” he said on the 49th day of the trial. The hearing, which began in September, is held in public at the request of the victim Gisele, turning the trial into a historic moment in the fight against sexual assault and chemical castration.

Since September 2, the court of Avignon in the south of France has put Dominique Pellicot and 50 other defendants aged 26 to 74 on trial for raping Gisele Pellicot in her home while she was unconscious. The trial is now in its final stages and sentencing is expected on December 20. During the hearing this Wednesday, Dominique Pellicot’s lawyer, Beatrice Zavaro, asked her client if he had “last words for his wife”, who has attended all the hearings in the process. The main defendant responded, “That’s part of who I carry deep inside me.”

In his final appearance, the 71-year-old addressed both his ex-wife and his daughter Caroline Derian, some of whose nude photos were found in thousands of files seized by police. He repeated, “I want to look my daughter in the eyes and tell her I didn’t do anything.” The seventy-year-old man’s children suspect that he may have also abused his grandchildren, and Caroline, who founded an association to warn about the consequences of chemical decapitation. “You are going to be here in this room saying, I will never come to see you. You have many opportunities. “You’ll be left alone like a dog,” he snapped at his father, who replied: “We’re always left alone.”

During his statement, Dominique Pellicot recalled the events and assured that he was involved in a “spiral”. When asked what he thought of chemical dedication, he replied that it was “nonsense” that “kills everything.” Throughout the ten years of the rapes, Pellicott put a powerful anxiolytic substance into the food of his ex-wife, with whom he shared a common life for 50 years. “They were doses prepared in advance on an appointment basis,” he explained at another hearing in mid-October, according to testimony collected by FranceInfo.

After his last statement, Antoine Camus, the lawyer for Gisele Pellicot and her three children, spoke. He asked, “How can it be that in 2024 we will find at least 50 men within a 50 kilometer radius, but actually 70 individuals, who come to take advantage of this inert, unconscious body that we would consider dead ?” , The lawyer called for taking advantage of the visibility of the debate to raise “awareness”, which “will eventually be broken by the violence of another time.” She declared, “Gizelle Pellicote not only wanted to show the seriousness of rape, she also wanted to show how rape is defended in 2024.”

Before the process began, Gisele Pellicot decided that all hearings would be public, authorizing access to the press so they could report what happened in the room. His lawyer said at the time that he had decided to open the trial to the public so that “the embarrassed side could change.” In recent weeks, the phrase has appeared in demonstrations called in its support and in posters put up on city walls by feminist groups. Sentencing in the case has been scheduled for December 20.