Gisèle Pelicot: "I keep going ... through determination to change society"

Angelique Chrisafis

Asked how she kept going in the face of what she had heard in court, Gisèle Pelicot replies:

It’s true that I hear lots of women, and men, who say you’re very brave. I say it’s not bravery, it’s will and determination to change society.

Angelique Chrisafis

Asked by her lawyer whether she should ask herself if she was responsible for what happened, Gisèle Pelicot replies: “Of course today I feel responsible for nothing. Today, above all, I’m a victim.”

After hearing wives or girlfriends or friends in court saying the accused did not seem capable of rape, she says: “We have to progress on rape culture in society.” People should learn the definition of rape, she adds.

Asked about some of the accused men who said they had been gently caressing her during the alleged assaults, and that this therefore did not constitute rape, Gisèle Pelicot says the men were sullying “an unconscious woman”.

She says: “For me they are rapists, they remain rapists. Rape is rape.”

Angelique Chrisafis

Asked about her husband referring to her as “la bourgeoise” to some of the men he is alleged to have recruited to rape her, she says:

It’s interesting. I’ve always liked going out well-dressed, I’ve always been like that in my life, at work, even today. When I go to the market, I am always well-dressed. So if my way of dressing and way of being was bourgeoise ... I’ve always been interested in literature and music.

She says Dominique Pelicot did not like to go to the opera with her, it was perhaps because of that. “But I think culture is accessible to everyone today.”

The court president asks: “You are the daughter of an army officer, with a classic education?”

Gisèle Pelicot replies: “Yes, with values.”

The president asks if that had perhaps been a problem for Dominique Pelicot.

She replies: “I never felt an inferiority complex from him.”

Angelique Chrisafis

Asked by a judge about how Dominique Pelicot found out about her extra-marital relationship, she says had told him about it.

“I was in the bathroom,” Gisèle says. “He had doubts. He saw I wasn’t the same person. He said: ‘I need to know’, and I admitted it. For him, it was very hard. He couldn’t imagine for a moment I could do that.”

Angelique Chrisafis

Gisèle Pelicot is asked about a video with her husband, shown to the court, in which she is clearly heard to say “Stop, stop, it hurts” and to speak in a voice that is not “normal” - perhaps the early stages of sedation.

The court president asks: “Do you think it was consenting?” She replies: “It was a rape, of course it was a rape.”

Angelique Chrisafis

The president describes how one of the accused men had said Dominique Pelicot had spoken of acting out of revenge against Gisèle Pelicot for her once having a relationship outside marriage.

He asks if she had felt there was a particular drive for humiliation by her husband. Gisèle Pelicot replies:

I have often thought that maybe he never recovered from the fact that I had met someone in my life. I often felt responsable. I thought: was it not maybe revenge, because he had so suffered from that affair? But it was years later, we had talked about that. He had affairs as well. The first man I knew was my husband, the second was my lover. We had talked about that as well.

Angelique Chrisafis

The court president asks Gisèle Pelicot about what she was wearing in Dominique Pelicot’s videos of her assaults.

The court heard last week how Dominique Pelicot would take off her pyjamas and dress her in other items, then re-dress her in pyjamas afterwards.

Gisèle Pelicot replies:

I had two drawers of my underwear, I knew my underwear well. I wore white or orange colours, I had stockings in white, I had black tights. The underwear in the videos is not my underwear. What I saw on the videos, it doesn’t belong to me, he must have kept it somewhere but I didn’t know.

Angelique Chrisafis

Gièle Pelicot says that because of her concerns, “I consulted three gynaecologists. Several times I had woken up and felt like I had lost my waters - as happens when you give birth.”

She adds: “I know in the morning I take my breakfast in the kitchen, it’s basic, orange juice, toast, jam, honey. He could have put it in my orange juice or my coffee. But I didn’t feel that moment where I went under [as sedated].”

She says that she once went for a morning hairdressing appointment and her then husband insisted on driving her. She had what seemed like a black-out, she says, and didn’t remember the hair cutting or styling.

Angelique Chrisafis

The court president is asking questions about the preparation of the drugs used to sedate Gisèle Pelicot. He says that Dominique Pelicot stocked the drugs in the house to serve in meals or an ice-cream after dinner.

The court president asks: “Do you remember moments when Dominique Pelicot invited you to drink specific things or dishes?”

Giséle Pelicot replies:

He made a lot of meals. I saw that as him being attentive. I know that one night he came to collect me at Avignon station after 10 days with my grandchildren. He had already prepared the meal - mashed potato. Two plates were already in the oven. I put olive oil on my potatoes and he put butter, so it was easy to see which plate was his.

We would have a glass of white wine together. I never found anything strange about my potatoes. We finished eating. Often when it’s a football match on TV, I’d let him watch it alone. He brought my ice-cream to bed, where I was, my favourite flavour, raspberry. And I thought, ‘How lucky I am, he’s a love.’

I never felt my heart flutter, I didn’t feel anything, I must have gone under very quickly. I would wake up with my pyjamas on. The mornings I must have been more tired than usual, but I walk a lot and thought it was that.

Gisèle Pelicot tells rape victims: 'It’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them'

Angelique Chrisafis

Of her trial, Pelicot said:

I wanted all woman victims of rape - not just when they have been drugged, rape exists at all levels – I want those woman to say: Mrs Pelicot did it, we can do it too. When you’re raped there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them.

Gisèle Pelicot says she is 'a woman who is totally destroyed'

Angelique Chrisafis

Gisèle Pelicot adds:

The profile of a rapist is not someone met in a car-park late at night. A rapist can also be in the family, among our friends.

When I saw one of the accused on the stand last week who came into my bedroom and house without consentment.

This man, who came to rape an unconscious, 57-year-old woman – I am also a mother and grandmother ... I could have been his grandmother.

I am a woman who is totally destroyed, and don’t know how I can pick myself up from this.

Gisèle Pelicot: 'How could you have brought these strangers into my bedroom?'

Angelique Chrisafis

Gisèle Pelicot said she wanted to address her husband, calling him Dominique, but saying she did not want to look at him.

“So many times, I said to myself how lucky am I to have you at my side.” She said he had stood by when she thought she was ill with neurological problems (which were later found to be due to his drugging of her.)

“He took me to neurologist, to scanners when I was worried. He also went with me to the gynaecologist. For me, he was someone I trusted entirely.”

She said: “How can the perfect man have got to this? How could you have betrayed me to this point? How could you have brought these strangers into my bedroom?”

Gisèle Pelicot takes the stand

Angelique Chrisafis

Gisèle Pelicot has taken the stand, with her former husband Dominique Pelicot watching from the dock. The president of the court told her she will have the opportunity to talk about evidence so far and on the issue of drugging.

Angelique Chrisafis

Among those who testified in court this morning was the mother of Florian R, a 32-year-old delivery driver and father of three who is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in December 2019.

The woman in her fifties told the court that she worked as a cleaner. She had Florian R before she was 20-years-old, then separated from his father three months later.

She said she was cross with her son when she found out the charges. “I wondered did I get something wrong in the way he was raised? I know what he did is very serious. I don’t hide that.”