A civil engineer accused of raping the wife of the Monster of Avignon has told a French court he felt “pity” for her.
Cyrille Delville, a father of two, is the 54-year-old third of 50 men to testify in the ongoing sex trial that has shocked France.
Retired electrician Dominique Pelicot, 73, is accused of drugging and raping his wife Giselle in their home in the quiet village of Mazan in a nightmare that lasted a decade.
Delville, a father of two, was one of dozens of men invited by Pelicot to rape Mrs Pelicot after being approached through a now-closed swingers website called Coco.fr
The men include a retired firefighter, a journalist, a councillor and truck drivers. Shocking video footage of sexual acts with Ms Pelicot – who has waived her anonymity – has been shown in court.
A suspect arrives in the courtroom with a police officer on September 20
Gisele Pelicot (pictured) spoke out again on Tuesday about the rapes she suffered at the hands of dozens of men while she was heavily sedated.
A prison bus arrives at the courtroom in Avignon on September 20
Delville has admitted to raping her and his name surfaced on devices found by police in Pelicot’s home in 2020, when he was arrested for “upskirting” women at his local supermarket.
He told the court he had been seeing a therapist since his arrest and that this had given him “a sense of peace” as he felt “a great deal of sadness for Ms Pelicot”.
Sobbing as he spoke to the court, Delville added: “I don’t know if I’ll ever get over this. I can’t sleep. I have nightmares.”
Delville told the court that his wife of 32 years had left him as a result of his involvement in the case.
He told the court they had had a ‘normal sex life’ but then they got bored and he started looking at porn sites and signed up for Coco.fr to ‘chat’.
Meanwhile, a woman who was upskirted by Pelicot at her local supermarket in September 2020 spoke out for the first time in an interview with French TV channel BFMTV.
Dominique Pélicot is accused of recruiting men online to repeatedly attack his wife over a 10-year period
Gisele Pelicot, flanked by her lawyer Stephane Babonneau, arrives in court on September 20
Gisele Pelicot pictured in a sketch with her daughter and lawyer in court on Wednesday
Gisele Pelicot arrives in court in Avignon on September 20
Only Nathalie, a mother of two, was identified as the woman, who described how she had “not worn a dress for two years” after the incident in Carpentras, a few minutes’ drive from Mazan.
She said: ‘He acted like a pathetic little boy, saying he hadn’t done anything. He took on the attitude of a victim.’
Nathalie said she first heard what was going on when a guard came up to her and told her what Pelicot had done to her and three other women.
She added: ‘It wasn’t until a month later that I realised how far he had gone. I threw the dress I was wearing away. I couldn’t stand it anymore and was traumatised.
‘I didn’t go shopping in a dress for two years.’
In another development on Friday, the judge ruled that the press is also prohibited from viewing shocking photos and videos of Ms. Pelicot.
Gisele Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, arrives at the Avignon courthouse on Tuesday flanked by her mother Gisele Pelicot
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, prompting officers to search his home
Mr. Pélicot pictured appearing before the courthouse in Avignon on September 11
Previously, the public was barred from the courtroom and adjacent room before they were shown, but Judge Roger Arata has ruled that only those directly involved will be allowed to see them.
A local journalist wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he found it “regrettable” because he could no longer explain the “content of the case” to the public.