The French husband who drugged his wife so she could be raped by more than 70 other men testified Tuesday to confess: “I am a rapist like all the others in this room.”
Dominique Pelicot, 71, has admitted to filming men raping his wife of 50 years, Gisele, 72, for nearly a decade while she was drugged and unconscious – and has begged his family for forgiveness.
“I acknowledge the facts alleged in their entirety,” Mr Pelicot said, according to BFM TV, whose correspondent was present at the courthouse.
“I’m a rapist like everyone else in this room,” he said, admitting that he had also raped his wife and the men he had recruited to abuse her while she was unconscious.
“I ask my wife, my children, my grandchildren to accept my apologies. I regret what I did. I ask for your forgiveness, even if it is not forgivable,” he continued.
He is accused of rape, gang rape and various violations of privacy through the recording and distribution of sexual images.
Pelicot addressed the 50 other men aged 26 to 73 who are also on trial for raping his wife.
“They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise,” he said.
The wheelchair-bound patient blamed his perverted behaviour on a difficult childhood and having been raped himself, complaining: “You’re not born perverted, you become perverted.”
His ex-wife responded to his confession by telling the court: “For 50 years I lived with a man I never imagined would be capable of such acts of rape.”
Pelicot, who was initially arrested in 2020 when he was caught filming up a woman’s skirt, had propositioned his wife for sex on a website and filmed the abuse.
Investigators later discovered 300 photographs and videos of the abuse, including naked images of his own daughter, prosecutors said.
Pelicot faces up to 20 years in prison.
With postal wires.
