Pelicot trial: French court hears how mass rape went undetected for years

Pelicot trial: French court hears how mass rape went undetected for years” Relatives of Gisèle Pelicot, the woman at the heart of a mass rape trial that has shaken France, testified in court on Tuesday about the deterioration they witnessed in Pelicot’s health throughout her almost decade-long ordeal, and the failure to determine its cause. Their accounts shed light on the widespread ignorance of drug-facilitated abuse that allowed the victim’s ordeal to go undetected for years. 

Gisèle Pelicot arrives at the courthouse in Avignon on October 3, 2024, for the trial of her former husband and 50 other men accused of raping her while she was unconscious. © Manon Cruz, Reuters

Pelicot’s former husband Dominique, 71, is standing trial in the city of Avignon, along with 50 other men, accused of drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her in a case that has stunned the nation and made headlines around the world.

The affaire Mazan, after the small town in Provence where the couple lived, has been described as many things at once: a trial of warped masculinity and patriarchal domination, of societal indifference to the abuse suffered by women, and of French laws on sexual crimes that critics say omit the notion of consent.  

The chilling case has also prompted soul-searching among health workers in France, highlighting doctors’ struggle to detect the signs of drug-facilitated abuse – known in France as “chemical submission”. 

“To understand the origin of all this, we would have had to think of the unimaginable,” Joël Pelicot, a doctor and Dominique Pelicot’s elder brother, told the court on Tuesday, illustrating widespread ignorance of the use of drugs to prey on women, particularly in cases of domestic abuse. 

A court sketch showing Joël Pelicot (centre), the brother of the main suspect in the mass rape trial that has shaken France, at the hearing in Avignon on October 8, 2024. © Benoît Peyrucq, AFP

“But we didn’t think of it,” added the bespectacled doctor, 76, one of several medical practitioners who prescribed an anti-anxiety drug known as Temesta to Gisèle Pelicot, telling the court that “she suffered from bouts of anxiety and had trouble sleeping”.  

After previously testing a variety of drugs and sleeping pills, Dominique Pelicot began administering Temesta to his wife in 2015, acting on the advice of a nurse he met online. The drugs put his wife into a deep sleep, allowing him to sexually abuse her without her realising. 

The pensioner himself had been prescribed Temesta for several years, the court learned on Tuesday, telling his doctor he was experiencing financial difficulties and suffering from anxiety. Prescribing Temesta for patients who suffer from sleep disorders or anxiety is extremely common in France, to the point that pharmacies frequently run out of the drug. 

Once he had honed his method, Dominique Pelicot contacted dozens of strangers on the Coco.fr dating website and invited them to rape his sedated wife. To ensure that she remained inert, he gradually increased the doses, to between three and ten tablets a day, which he crushed into her food and drink.  

There were warning signs, such as the day Gisèle Pelicot noticed that her beer was a dubious shade of green, but little to suggest the extent of the scheme. In all, nearly 780 Temesta tablets were prescribed by various doctors until 2020, the year Dominique Pelicot was arrested. 

The 71-year-old has admitted inviting strangers into their home to rape her. Most of his co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to rape charges, some claiming they believed Gisèle Pelicot was consenting or that her husband’s consent was sufficient. 

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