She begins by thanking the commissioner who oversaw the investigation. “I think he saved my life,” declared Gisèle Pélicot, Thursday, September 5, before the criminal court of Vaucluse in Avignon, on the fourth day of the trial known as “the Mazan rapes”. Mazan is the small village at the foot of Mont Ventoux, where this retiree, now aged 71, lived with her husband, Dominique Pélicot, since March 2013. Until “trauma”At “tsunami”, to the “explosion”.
How do you describe the moment when your life falls apart? How do you explain what it feels like to learn that the father of your three children, with whom you shared fifty years of life together, handed you over to dozens of men to be raped? For over an hour, Gisèle Pélicot managed to detail her ordeal without blinking.
She first returns to this September 12, 2020, when she discovered “Mr. Pelicot” in tears. “I did something stupid”, he told her, explaining that he had been caught in a supermarket in Carpentras filming under the skirts of customers. Shocked, she decided to forgive him anyway.You’re going to apologize to these women and you’re going to get psychological help.” she demands of him. She then imagines the case closed.
At that time, Gisèle Pélicot had a lot to do with her seven grandchildren: she left for Paris to take care of part of the troupe. And then, her health worried her: she had “a gynecological concern” and asks his daughter to make him an appointment with a doctor. “But what do you do with your days?” her husband says to her on the phone, in an amused tone.
On his return to Mazan on October 21, Dominique Pélicot was waiting for him: he had prepared his meal for him at 4 p.m. “A mashed potato.” She wakes up the next day with no memory of her evening. It was in fact the final rape organized by her husband, who had, as usual, hidden Temesta pills (an anxiolytic) in her food to make her fall asleep. “I said to myself: here we go again.” For ten years, Gisèle Pélicot has suffered from absences, black holes, which make her very anxious. Ten years of medical wandering which will find an unthinkable explanation.
On November 2, she is expected at the police station. She plans to go there to testify in the case of the videos taken without the knowledge of supermarket customers. Heard by the police officer with whom she had spoken on the phone, she is surprised by his questions. For more than an hour, she is asked if she has a normal sexuality, if she practices swinging. “I said, ‘Listen, no.’ Only one man could touch me, and that was Mr. Pélicot. I could only stand Mr. Pélicot’s hands on my body.”says the septuagenarian, who describes herself as “a rather modest woman”.
The commissioner continues and warns her: “I’m going to show you things that won’t please you.” He shows her a photo of her being raped by a man. “I don’t recognize the individual, nor the woman”she recalled before the criminal court.. Faced with the policeman’s insistence, she finally recognized herself.I’m dressed in a way that doesn’t suit me.” However, she does not recognize the man. He shows her a second, then a third photo. “I told him: ‘Stop. They’re raping me, these are barbaric scenes'”she relates to the bar. She is in shock. “The trauma is immense, I just want to go home, take refuge with my little dog,” says Gisèle Pélicot.
“My world is falling apart, everything is falling apart, my whole structure. We had three beautiful children, seven grandchildren, I thought we were a perfect couple. Even our friends said: ‘you are the ideal couple'”, she continues, speaking with precision and simplicity. She is offered to see other videos, she refuses. Some hair is taken from her, the police take her back to her home, which she finds upside down, after a search. The investigators searched, in vain, for the medication used to drug her. She is accompanied by a friend, at the request of the police, so that she is not left alone.
“At that moment, all I want to do is disappear. I say to myself: I’m taking the car with my dog and I’m going to finish it. It lasts 10 seconds, [puis] I think of my children, my grandchildren”says Gisèle Pélicot. She calls her three children to warn them. Starting with the eldest, Caroline. “I hear a beast, I hear my daughter screaming like a beast“. She then informs her sons, David and Florian: “They don’t have the same reaction as their sister at all, they are modest. I don’t know if they understood.” In the hours that followed, his children called him every half hour. “Mom, don’t disappear,” they beg. “They are worried about my life, they are afraid that I will not hold out”.
The next day, the police told him that Dominique Pélicot had confessed to hiding the boxes of Temesta in hiking boots. “I’m like a boxer who falls and every time I have to get up”comments Gisèle Pélicot, stoically. The police commissioner of Carpentras asks her to leave her house and even the region, because the men who came to rape her know her address. “It’s super scary, I’m completely lost.”she describes. She fills two large suitcases and leaves to find refuge with her children, in the Paris region. “All I have left is my dog. We leave for the station, I’m devastated… How will I get back on my feet?”
She organizes her move as best she can, wants to get rid of everything that remains of her life with Dominique Pélicot. After several months surrounded by her children, she asks if she can move into the second home of her daughter and son-in-law. “I needed to be alone to recreate my own life”she describes. In this new place of life, which she keeps secret, she has been rebuilding herself, little by little, since September 2021. She finally found a small apartment, which she “nicely decorated”. “I started making friends, getting invited for coffee” she says with a hint of a smile. “My friends surround me, they are there, my children too. They don’t let me go”she continues, specifying however that the relations with her daughter Caroline were complicated, the latter not understanding that her mother did not want to confront the issue.
Gisèle Pélicot finally agreed to view the videos found by the police in May, at the request of her lawyer, to prepare for the trial. “These are unbearable rape scenes where there are sometimes two or three of them on top of me. I am unconscious, anesthetized, it is unbearable,” she throws in front of the court in a cold anger. “I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” she continues. “We see this drugged, mistreated woman, who is dead on her bed. The body is not cold, the body is warm. But I am as if I were dead. They take advantage of me, they do not tell themselves that this woman is in distress, they see me as a rag doll, a garbage bag.”she says, accusing the multiple accused. Only 14 of the 48 accused present admitted the facts alleged. Three apologized to the victim.
“I held out for these four years of trial. It is not for me that I testify, but for all these women who undergo chemical submission. The day a woman wakes up and does not remember what she did the day before, she will say to herself: hey, I heard Mrs. Pélicot’s testimony. That is why I testify, so that none of them have to undergo chemical submission again,” she throws into the silent room. To the president who asked her about her current state, Gisèle Pélicot sums up, in conclusion: “The facade is solid, but the interior is a field of ruins.”