“An unbearable ordeal”: the children of Gisèle P., drugged and then raped by her husband and dozens of strangers he recruited on the Internet, for 10 years, at the marital home in France, came out shaken on Tuesday, after the long and raw account of the facts, detailed to the point of nausea.
The main victim, now aged 72, remained stoic, showing no emotion on the second day of the hearing of this extraordinary trial, where 51 defendants are being tried before the criminal court of Vaucluse, in Avignon.
Fifty-one men, aged between 26 and 74, were prosecuted for aggravated rape for the most part, for which they face up to 20 years in prison.
Throughout the presentation of the facts by the president of the court, Roger Arata, who summarized in a monotonous and cold tone a file of 31 volumes, Dominique P., wearing a gray T-shirt, remained with a vague look. Sometimes exchanging with his lawyer, Me Beatrice Zavarro, sitting on the other side of the glass wall of the prisoners’ box.
Then, with a simple “yes”, the 71-year-old retiree, presented by the prosecution as the “conductor” of the rapes committed against his wife, admitted his responsibility.
Questioned in turn, only 14 of the 48 other defendants present – one, on the run, will be tried in absentia; another was absent for medical reasons on Tuesday – also admitted the facts alleged. Three apologized to the victim.
Sitting next to Gisèle P., the couple’s three children had a harder time holding back their emotions during this long and emotionally charged day. The couple has been in the process of divorcing since the facts were revealed.
On two occasions, Caroline Darian (her pen name for the book she published in 2022, And I stopped calling you dad) had to leave the courtroom, sobbing and shaking. Supported by her brothers, she broke down when the president of the court mentioned photomontages in which she appeared naked. The photos had been found on her father’s computer, in a folder entitled “Around my daughter, naked”.
For the children, “it’s an immense pain,” said their lawyer, Me Antoine Camus, during a recess. “Caroline had to be taken out, it was absolutely unbearable. Even if they didn’t discover anything, if everyone knew the file, it was particularly trying that [mardi] morning, of course, but necessary.”
Looks
On Monday, Gisèle P. and her children had in fact opposed the request for a closed hearing by the prosecution and part of the defense, demanding public debates, so that “the shame changes sides.”
Before joining the civil parties’ bench, after his second outing, Mr.me Darian stopped for a moment in front of the box of the 18 accused detainees. She looked at them, but none of them met her gaze. Neither did her father, whom she now calls her “progenitor.” “Caroline insisted on holding his gaze for a very long time, to see how far he was capable of going in his denials,” explained M.e Camus.
Once the hearing was adjourned on Tuesday afternoon, standing against the wall of the prisoners’ box, Dominique P. seemed to want to catch the eye of his family members. Without success. None of them deigned to meet his.
In total, only 18 of the 51 accused, including the husband, appeared in custody, the others being free.
These accused detainees are those who came to rape Gisèle P. several times, up to six times for some, or prosecuted for the most serious rapes. Or those with a serious past, with previous convictions for domestic violence or rape, sometimes against children, suffering from drug or alcohol addictions, or having an attraction to pedophile or even zoophilic practices.
Apart from the main accused, only 50 of the 72 attackers of Gisèle P. identified by investigators based on photos and videos taken by her husband have been identified and found, following an investigation that began almost by chance on September 12, 2020.
That day, Dominique P. was arrested by a security guard at a supermarket in Carpentras, in the south of France, after filming customers up their skirts. When questioned, he explained that he had “acted on impulse” that he had “not been able to control.”
But, during several successive searches, investigators came across thousands of photos and videos in which his wife, unconscious and inert, was raped by strangers. The acts began in July 2011, when the couple still lived in the Paris region, and continued from March 2013 to October 2020, after their move to Mazan, a charming village near Mont Ventoux.
Heard on Wednesday, the investigators should specify in particular the manner in which the accused were apprehended. The following day, Thursday, the floor will be given for the first time to the civil parties, in particular to Gisèle P.