Monster of Avignon stuns courtroom with shocking admission as he finally gives evidence about drugging his wife and allowing dozens of men to rape her
The ‘Monster of Avignon’ stunned the courtroom today during his closely watched trial when he confessed to drugging his wife and allowing several strangers to rape her.
Dominique Pélicot, 71, spoke about his crimes for the first time on Tuesday morning after being absent from his trial due to illness.
“I am a rapist, just like everyone else in this courtroom,” he admitted today in an explosive case that has captured the world’s attention for its scale and horror. “I acknowledge the facts in their entirety.”
Mr Pélicot was in the dock at the Vaucluse court in Avignon, where he was on trial with 50 other men, all accused of the “aggravated rape” of his wife Gisèle Pélicot, also 71, over a period of ten years.
Pélicot wore a thick gray shirt and confessed to crimes. His own daughter described him as “one of the greatest sexual predators” of recent years.
Dominique Pélicot is accused of recruiting men online to repeatedly attack his wife over a period of 10 years
Gisèle Pélicot arrives at the court in Avignon, France on the eighth day of the trial
In a new artist’s sketch, Mr. Pélicot appears at the Avignon courthouse on September 11
Mrs Pélicot watched impassively today as her ex-husband shuffled into the courtroom, using a cane to support himself.
“Today I claim that, with the obligations that we all have, I am a rapist, just like everyone else in this room. They cannot say otherwise,” he told the court.
Pélicot also focused on alleged crimes he suffered as a child. He was allegedly raped at age nine and witnessed another sexual abuse at age fourteen.
“I can’t remember anything from my childhood other than shocks and traumas,” Pélicot said.
But that all changed, Pélicot said, when he met his wife as a teenager.
“I was very happy with her,” Pélicot said in his shocking confession. “She was the opposite of my mother, who was completely rebellious.
‘We had three children and grandchildren, whom I never touched.’
He said that Gisèle Pélicot – from whom he is now divorced – “didn’t deserve this.”
At the end of her brief statement, Mrs. Pélicot bowed her head and put on her sunglasses.
Pélicot has been in pre-trial detention since 2020, after he was first arrested on suspicion of gassing and then raping Ms. Pélicot. He invited men he had approached online to do the same.
Pélicot, like all other suspects, faces a prison sentence of up to 20 years.
Last week, psychologists described Pélicot as a character from the series “Jekyll and Hyde,” who pretended to be a normal husband during the day but drugged his wife at night so strangers could rape her.
Pélicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, 46, told the court last week that he was “one of the greatest sexual predators” of recent years.
She said he secretly photographed her naked, along with her two sisters-in-law.
This happened in the same family home in Mazan, some 32 kilometres from Avignon, where Pélicot had invited the alleged rapists.
Pélicot was first arrested in September 2020 for secretly filming under women’s skirts in a supermarket in Carpentras.
His equipment was searched and hundreds of pornographic videos and photos of women were found.
While in custody, Mr Pélicot reported a hard drive hidden under a printer containing a file called ‘Abuses’.
The attackers’ nicknames and phone numbers were categorized, along with some 3,800 photos and videos of Gisèle Pélicot being raped between 2011 and 2020.
Detectives have recorded a total of 92 rapes, committed by 72 men. 51 of them have been identified.
The Pélicot sex club used advertising on a ‘partners’ site on an online forum called ‘Without Her Knowing’ on the website coco.fr.
Of the 83 men involved, 51, aged between 26 and 73, were identified and arrested by police.
Pélicot is said to have drugged his wife by adding Temesta, a powerful anti-anxiety drug, to her dinner.
Dominique Pelicot can be seen in this courtroom sketch on the right
The abuse took place in the town of Mazan, in the south of France, and was only discovered after the man was caught slipping women into a local supermarket – leading to officers searching his home
Alleged rapists involved in the case include civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a city councillor and truck drivers.
In another case, Pélicot is charged with the rape and murder of a 23-year-old real estate agent in Paris in 1991.
He admitted attempted rape in 1999 after DNA tests showed there was a case against him.
The case of aggravated rape in Avignon is expected to be heard until December 21.
Fourteen other suspects have also confessed to rape, while the rest deny committing any crime.