Speaking for the first time before the Vaucluse criminal court, Dominique Pelicot, the main accused in the Mazan rape case, admitted to being “a rapist” while declaring that his ex-wife Gisèle Pelicot “did not deserve” what she suffered for ten years. Before adding that he “acknowledges all the facts”.
“I am a rapist like those in this room. They all knew, they can’t say otherwise,” he said, referring to the 50 co-defendants in the trial. At this statement, some of them made a small noise of disapproval in the room.
This is the first time he has spoken since the start of this emblematic trial of sexual violence and chemical submission, which began on September 2 in Avignon and is scheduled to run until December 20.
Absent for a week for health reasons, he reappeared for the first time this Tuesday with a lighter protocol, required by doctors, and in particular with a chair at his disposal and regular breaks.
“You are not born like that, you become like that”
Dominique Pelicot first spoke about his youth, which he described as “difficult”, marked by parents “who were violent towards each other”, briefly mentioning two “traumatic” episodes, a rape he allegedly suffered at the age of 9 and another he allegedly was forced to carry out on a building site while he was working there as an apprentice.
“I still had those traumas behind me,” he explained, his voice shaking and in tears.
“You are not born that way, you become that way,” he added.
“She didn’t deserve this, I admit that,” the septuagenarian also said from the dock about his former partner, whom he met in 1971, speaking of a “beautiful encounter” before drugging her, raping her and having her raped by dozens of strangers recruited on the internet between 2011 and 2020.
“I ask for forgiveness”
“I am guilty of what I did. I ask my wife, my children, my grandchildren, Mrs. M. (raped by her husband using the same method and in the presence of Dominique Pelicot, Editor’s note), to please accept my apologies. I ask for forgiveness, even if it is not acceptable,” he pleaded after Gisèle Pelicot assured the court that she had “loved this man for 50 years.”
Gisèle Pelicot remained stoic throughout her speech before herself taking the stand to briefly testify.
“Not for a single second could I doubt this man” in whom “I had complete confidence,” she explained at the bar.
Also read: Why the Mazan rape trial must be a turning point