The Pélicot case: a horror exposed

This case is unusually horrifying, but the misogyny that enabled is chillingly common

Gisèle Pélicot arrives at court in Avignon to attend the trial of her husband, Dominique Pélicot on 10 September
Gisèle Pélicot arrives at court in Avignon to attend the trial of her husband, Dominique Pélicot on 10 September
(Image credit: Christophe Simon / AFP / Getty Images)

For members of the Pélicot family, one date will be etched on their memories forever, said Luc Leroux in Le Monde. It was on 2 November 2020, in a police station in southern France, that Gisèle Pélicot, now 72, was told what investigators had found on her husband Dominique's computer: tens of thousands of images of her being raped and sodomised by him and by scores of strangers, while she was drugged and unconscious.

In court last week, where 51 men, including Pélicot, are on trial, Gisèle testified that she had no idea of her husband's depravity; their marriage had been happy, their sex life conventional. Her world had "collapsed" when she saw herself lying like a "rag doll" in her bed, being "sacrificed on the altar of vice". Her daughter, on being told of what her father had done, had screamed "like a wild beast". One of her sons had vomited.

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