Like the main accused Dominique Pelicot on Tuesday, a co-accused in the serial rape trial in France admitted on Wednesday to being “a rapist” and demanded a “harsh punishment”, while revealing a childhood marked by sexual violence.
Unlike the 50 other men tried in Avignon (south) before the Vaucluse criminal court since September 2, Jean-Pierre M., 63, is not being prosecuted for the rape of the ex-wife of the main accused Gisèle Pelicot, but of his own wife on whom he had modeled the same scenario developed by Dominique Pelicot, eight years his senior.
“I love her, my wife. I will do everything to be well. I am in prison and I deserve it. I have done despicable acts. I am a criminal and a rapist,” this former employee of a cooperative clearly stated, adding: “What I have done is horrible, I want a harsh punishment.”
This man is accused of having, between 2015 and 2018, also drugged his own partner with an anxiolytic provided by Dominique Pelicot, of having raped her and having had him rape her at his home in Drôme, around fifty kilometers from Mazan, in the south of France.
At least 12 rapes, often filmed, were recorded by investigators on the partner of “Rasmus”, “Pierre” or “Kim” – his pseudonyms on the Internet – including 10 in which Mr. Pelicot participated.
Jean-Pierre M. had met the latter virtually on the Coco.fr website in 2015 at the show “without his knowledge”. The main accused of the Mazan rapes had first offered to “rape” Gisèle “several times”. But “I refused”, he said.
Pelicot “reminded me of my father”
When asked by the president of the court, Roger Arata, whether Dominique Pelicot had clearly told him that Gisèle was “drugged and that he was looking for a man for his wife who was asleep and taking medication”, he replied in the affirmative.
At her suggestion, he nevertheless agrees to reproduce this protocol on his own wife. But she is small and, fearing for her health, he does not dare give her the dose recommended by Mazan’s alleged attacker. On several occasions, she will wake up, preventing the sexual acts from being carried out, to the great displeasure of Mr. Pelicot, who will leave “irritated”.
During the last incident, she woke up before running after Dominique Pelicot. “I asked my husband what was going on. He said it was to see my underwear and then he got caught in his lies,” explained Cilia M., his wife, who did not file a complaint to “protect their five children,” before the court last Wednesday.
“It’s inconceivable that he did this. He was a wonderful person. He destroyed us,” she said, adding that she would “never forgive” him.
“If I had not known Mr. Pelicot, I would never have taken action. He was reassuring and imposing. He reminded me of my father,” explained Jean-Pierre M., a man whose experts note the difficulty “in asserting his point of view and showing authority.”
“My youth is shameful”
He began to regularly consult pornographic sites in the early 2010s, after his father died, reawakening his childhood traumas. “I was mainly watching acts that I saw on my mother,” he said.
“My youth was shame, alcohol, sex, a lot of silence,” he said, without elaborating before being challenged by his lawyer. “We experienced horrible acts from my father. Sexual violence. My father, I never called him ‘dad’ but ‘the father’.”
He detailed the times when, as a child, he had to perform oral sex on his father as a “reward” for being able to accompany him fishing with his sister.
“My sister was crying, I preferred it to be me. And I was more used to it,” said Jean-Pierre M., wondering if he had not been raped by their own dog, on the father’s orders, when he was “seven, eight years old.”
“Our mother tried to protect us, but she was drinking,” he said, adding that he had to witness scenes of his father raping her.
Questioned after this testimony, Dominique Pelicot regretted more that Jean-Pierre M.’s children had been present at the home at the time of the events rather than the rapes of Cilia M., whose unconscious state “was not an obstacle”, according to him.