Husband who drugged his wife to be raped by 50 men is rushed to hospital on the day he was due to give evidence – before his daughter breaks down in tears as she hears graphic accounts of her mother’s abuse

The trial of a man in France who drugged his wife for more than a decade and invited dozens of men to rape her was dramatically jeopardised this morning when he was rushed to hospital for treatment for unexplained abdominal pain.

Judge Roger Arata announced that the suspect, Dominique Pelicot, 71, will receive medical care after he is due to testify today in the sex trial that has shocked France.

There will be “updates on his state of health” as the matter is resolved, the judge said – but it is technically possible to avoid a trial in France due to his extreme ill health.

Arata said other witnesses would be heard until Pelicot was fit to be questioned, meaning the trial, which was set to last four months, could continue.

But despite his absence from court today, Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Payronnet, 45, burst into tears this morning after hearing harrowing stories of abuse at the hands of her mother.

Peyronnet was led away from the Vaucluse court in Avignon as a detective described in detail how her father, Dominique Pelicot, had arranged for more men to rape her mother.

Police detective Stephan Gal told the court how between 2011 and 2020, Pelicot recruited dozens of men on the internet to come to his marital home in a village near Avignon and abuse his wife while she lay unconscious.

The retired electrician has already admitted that for almost a decade he added strong sedatives to his wife Gisèle’s dinner and rosé wine to make her unconscious.

Police also found disgusting photos of Caroline and her two daughters-in-law in a haul of some 200,000 images and videos he kept in a computer file labelled ‘abuse’.

About 84 men he met in a notorious Internet chat room took turns sneaking into their modest chalet in a village near Avignon to rape her in the marital bed.

But Pelicot, an apparently devoted husband and father of three who moved to the south of France to retire, blames his wife and the police for destroying his idyllic life in Provence.

He told psychologists that his wife was to blame for his actions because she refused to have sex with him.

Psychologist Annabelle Montagne told the court in Avignon yesterday morning that she questioned Pelicot in December 2020 – a month and a half after he was taken into custody – during which he admitted to having carried out the campaign of abuse against his wife Gisele.

“Pelicot said, ‘My wife and I had a discussion about swinging, but she didn’t agree, so I gave her drugs,'” the psychologist said.

Madame Montagne said Pelicot insisted he loved his wife, but she added: ‘He sees his partner as an object to satisfy his sexual and narcissistic needs. His wife is then a partial object and no longer an object of total love.’

Yesterday, another prison psychologist told the court that Pelicot had a “split personality”, lacked empathy and had inherited the temperament of his father, who was said to have been a violent abuser.

During interviews after his arrest in September 2020, Pelicot insisted the vile abuse of his wife of 50 years, Gisele, would have continued if he had not been arrested.

Psychologist Marianne Douteau told the court yesterday how her client was grieving his arrest. She complained that the case against him had ruined his life and that he and his wife could still have a happy marriage if his crimes had not been discovered. ​​(Pelicot) complains that this criminal case against him has ruined his life.

“He claims that everything could have continued as normal if he had not been arrested. He said: ‘Gisele would not have known about it, we would have just stayed happy.'”

Meanwhile, Pelicot’s father Denis was said to be a brutal wife-beater who sent his son to work from the age of 14 and took 80 percent of his wages. His parents also took in a young girl, whom Denis allegedly abused.

The psychologist concluded that Pelicot had inherited a personality similar to his father’s: angry, stubborn and impulsive.

She said: ‘Dominique Pelicot comes from a troubled family where young children were abused.

‘[Pelicot] has a two-sided personality; he is a patriarch, but he is also irresponsible and manipulative. Behind closed doors he does not respect boundaries.

He has a split personality between the person he wants to be and the person he is.

‘He shows no empathy – but he is not fake [in his expressions of love for his wife]’, she concluded.

The psychologist also explained that Pelicot admitted to being very sexually demanding and regularly looking for sex on the internet.

He told her, “I went on the Internet every day, I was constantly on sites that offered partner swapping.”

Pelicot will testify this afternoon at the Vaucluse court in Avignon.

The frail 71-year-old grandfather of seven was excused from trial yesterday after his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told Judge Roger Arata he needed urgent treatment for abdominal pain.

But today, dozens of people lined up to see the Monster of Avignon testify for his wife Gisele and his children David, Caroline and Florian.

However, when the hearing began, Judge Arata announced that main suspect Pelicot was still seriously ill and needed medical attention.

It is not yet clear whether Pelicot will be well enough to appear in court today and testify.

In Madame Pelicot’s testimony, Caroline Peyronnet, the couple’s only daughter, told the court last week how her world collapsed when her mother called her to tell her about his crimes.

Her suffering was further compounded when detectives discovered that Mr. Pelicot had also taken photographs of Caroline lying motionless on a bed in her mother’s underwear.

Mrs Peyronnet, 45, described her father as “one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 years.”

Pelicot faces up to 20 years in prison. The other men will receive shorter sentences if found guilty.

The trial is expected to last until December.