Police say that Gisele Pelicot had no idea she was being sexually abused and raped by her own husband, as well as by dozens of strangers he invited to do the same, until officers showed her photo and video evidence in 2020. On Thursday, the Frenchwoman took the stand in Avignon at the trial for her now-former spouse and 50 of those other men to reveal what went through her mind when she first saw that evidence that stretched back over a decade. "My world fell apart, everything I had built up with [husband Dominique Pelicot] collapsed," she said, per Al Jazeera. "Three children, seven grandchildren ... Even our friends told us we were the perfect couple."
The 72-year-old said she didn't even recognize herself initially in the photos and videos the police showed her, thousands of which they'd pulled from Dominique Pelicot's electronic devices after an unrelated 2020 arrest for taking upskirt photos. Gisele Pelicot noted she couldn't even look past a few photos, telling the cop showing them to her, "These are rape scenes. I'm inert, asleep, and they're raping me." Though "rape is not the right word," she added. "It is barbarism." Pelicot testified that she was "sacrificed on the altar of vice," per the AP. "They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag."
Pelicot, a mother of three, said the situation was "unbearable," and that she left her family home after the revelation, leaving with just two suitcases—"all that was left for me of 50 years of life together." Al Jazeera notes that 18 of the 51 accused, including Dominique Pelicot, are in custody, while 32 are attending the trial of their own volition. One suspect is still at large and will be judged in absentia. Meanwhile, Gisele Pelicot's daughter left the courtroom in tears earlier this week when it was revealed that her father had kept a folder on his computer featuring naked photos of her, per the Guardian. More on that here. (More rape stories.)
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