“I didn’t go back because the ‘rape mode’ suited me, but because I couldn’t control my sexuality,” this 46-year-old accused declared on Wednesday before the Vaucluse criminal court.
“I was in the grip of a sexual addiction which made me hateful”blurted Jérôme V., stationed behind the microphone, in the accused box. The 46-year-old man speaks calmly. In three and a half years of detention, he seems to have reflected a lot on himself. His arrest dates back to March 2021. This former volunteer firefighter is accused of having gone to Mazan six times to rape Gisèle Pelicot, between March and June 2020, in full confinement. Investigators noted multiple vaginal and anal penetrations on the unconscious victim, as well as forced fellatio, “with the active participation of Dominique Pelicot”.
“I didn’t go back because ‘rape mode’ suited me, but because I couldn’t control my sexuality”he assures before the Vaucluse criminal court, during his personality interrogation, Wednesday October 2. Rare fact among the accused: Jérôme V. admitted the alleged facts from his first custody, “aware of the transgressive nature of his actions”, notes the expert psychologist who met him. “MBut the most important thing for him was his own needs.” she emphasizes, observing at his home “overflowing sexuality”.
This man with an athletic physique, a great fan of running, admits to having had for a long time an irrepressible need to deceive his companions. “With them, I couldn’t do everything sexually”he justifies during his psychiatric assessment. He has multiplied his conquests, via dating sites, but also inlibertine clubs or on the naturist beaches of Cap d’Agde. “Because of my addiction, I was less and less careful about what I expected from my partners, which pushed me to accept sex with transvestites,” also relates the person concerned.
A regular consumer of pornography, Jérôme V. says he watched “a bit of everything”recognizing a preference for “Sodomy, big breasts and voyeurism”. “Or people sodomized in their sleep”he also clarified to the psychologist expert. Questioned on this point on Wednesday, the forty-year-old does not deny his attraction to “somnophilia”posing the term himself, even if he claims to have only consulted this type of content very occasionally.
An assessor notes that a list of 89 female first names was discovered at her home. “Does this correspond to all your infidelities during your four relationships?“The person concerned agrees. “I needed to count the conquests, it wasn’t just infidelities”he specifies. His former companions – Jérôme V. says he had four long relationships – are not kind about him. One of them depicts him as “very focused on games and entertainment” and speaks of a man “self-centered, insecure.”
His ex-wife, with whom he remained married for around ten years, is “fell madly in love with him”, reports the personality investigator, even if, on the side of Jérôme V., “feelings were never very high”, he tempers in court. The couple still bought a house and had two children.
“He was a passive and idle man, preferring to take advantage of his free time to indulge in his two passions: hiking and infidelity.”
The ex-wife of Jérôme V.to the personality investigator
The mother of his children assures that he was “rigid and demanding”, “obsessed with weight and food.” He believes today that there was “a monotony in intimate relationships: I blamed him for acting like a starfish.”.
In prison, Jérôme V. said he found an explanation for his perpetual need to look elsewhere: “C“was an enhancement of my person as a lover, to reassure me, because of all my shortcomings”he explains distinctly in his cubicle, seeming to put on a psychologizing speech. He illustrates his point by looking back on his childhood. It describes a mother scathing towards him, whose criticisms and remarks would be at the origin of a “great lack of confidence” in him. He also claims to have been the “pain-suffer” from his college. “My mother never noticed, even though it was written in the report cards,” he maintains.
During PE class, a group of kids would have it “defrocked in front of everyone”. “I kept everything to myself, my parents were not able to hear my suffering”assures this only son of a postman father and a stay-at-home mother. Overall, he believes he had “a very average level” throughout his schooling. He would have dreamed of being a history-geography teacher, and went as far as obtaining a degree at the IUFM, obtained with difficulty after five years. “I dreamed of working with children, but when I did my observation internships, I realized that I would be completely abandoned”he relates, without saying more.
Jérôme V. judges himself harshly, claiming to have “chained professional failures”exercising first as college supervisor, then receiving unemployment for a time, before going from odd job to odd job. At the time of the facts for which he is being tried, he was employed at a greengrocer. He also served as a volunteer firefighter from 2008 to 2016.
The expert psychiatrist detected in him a “major narcissistic flaw” and notes that he exhibits all the characteristics of a personality “dependent”. She describes the accused as a individual feeling “unable to function alone”. Jerome V. “thinks that others know how to do things better than him”, “needs constant assistance and does not learn to live alone”, she explains at the bar on Wednesday.
Facing the court, the man clings to this last characteristic to explain his coming to Dominique Pelicot, in the spring of 2020. “I was single, in confinement”he slips. He continues to acknowledge the facts, but claims to have been influenced by pornographic photos that the retiree sent him after each of his visits. “I was afraid of the impact, that he would distribute the photos”he proclaims from his box, twhile claiming not to want to “hide behind victimization”. Jérôme V. often expresses himself in long, sometimes convoluted sentences, and only lets little emotion show, except when he speaks about himself.
The expert did not really detect any guilt in him. She points to her “tendency to blame Mr. Pelicot”, adding that he did not “no empathy for the victim”. What the accused does not completely dispute.
“I think I have more difficulty than an average person in being able to imagine the suffering of others.”
Jerome V.before the Vaucluse criminal court
The man tried on Wednesday to show consideration towards the victim, ensuring to have been “very touched” at the start of the trial with the testimony of this “little piece of woman”. “I said to myself, ‘You really hurt someone who seemed to be pure’.” continues the forty-year-old. He will be responsible for explaining the facts on Thursday, during his questioning on the merits of the case.