Paris: In a case that has sparked widespread outrage and horror in France concerning a man who drugged his wife and invited over 70 strangers to rape her, it has also come to light that he clicked naked pictures of his daughter, now in her 40s, after drugging her. The shocking revelation caused Caroline Darian, the daughter of Dominique and Gisele Pelicot, to leave the courtroom where the accused are standing trial.
Caroline, who was sitting with her mother and two siblings, broke down and shook uncontrollably during the trial and had to be helped out of the courtroom as the presiding judge disclosed the horrifying details, Daily Mail reported. When the police probed Dominique Pelicot's computer files, they stumbled across a folder labelled 'My Daughter Naked', said Judge Roger Arata.
Like Gisele, who was drugged and raped by 72 strangers almost 100 times over a decade, Dominique drugged his daughter Caroline with tranquilisers before lying her on a bed, partially dressed in her mother's clothes, and clicked pictures of her. The pictures had been taken at the family home near Paris, sometime before they moved south to Provence, in 2013.
A case that shook France
Dominique and 50 others have gone to trial for allegedly drugging his 72-year-old wife and raping her, as well as recruiting dozens of strangers to come to his home and sexually assault the victim, in a case that has horrified France due to the mass scale of the crimes. The defendant, identified as Dominique Pelicot, 71, allegedly crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication and mixed it into his wife Gisele's evening meal and recruited men to rape and sexually abuse her from an online chatroom.
Police identified at least 92 rapes committed by 72 men, of whom 50 have been identified and charged and are now standing trial alongside the husband. The victim, now 72, only learnt of the abuse in 2020 after being informed by police. Her lawyer Antoine Camus said the trial will be a "horrible ordeal" for her as it will be the first time she sees video evidence of the abuse.
The victim was supported by her three children and requested for a public trial because one behind closed doors was "what her attackers would have wanted". Caroline has written a book about the case called 'And I Stopped Calling You Daddy' detailing when she learnt of his crimes. Caroline wrote that she was "haunted by the fear" that her father may have invited men to rape her too.
What did the accused say?
According to The Telegraph, at least 35 of the defendants have pleaded not guilty, saying they had no idea that Gisele was not a willing partner, while 14 others, including Dominique, have pleaded guilty. Dominique said he "occasionally" took part in the online forum but it was "not his habit".
He had confessed to the crime and admitted that he "put her to sleep", "offered her" and filmed the horrifying rapes. Health records reportedly show he obtained 450 sleeping pills in one year alone. The accused men recruited by her husband were instructed to avoid smelling of any kind of fragrance or cigarette smoke to avoid alerting his wife and to leave if she moved so much as an arm, investigators said.
One of the accused said they believed it was a "couple's game" while another said that the relationship "had to take place at night in complete darkness because the woman was shy and hung up despite her desire". A defendant expressed regret for the victim and said that he was "as much a victim as she was", claiming to have been tricked by Dominique.
'He disgusts me'
However, the judge declared that "the instructions were clear" to the attackers who were summoned by Gisele's husband, noting they did not speak to the victim who was "closer to a coma than sleep". Gisele wife was under the impression that she was suffering from Alzheimer's disease as she suffered from a growing abundance of gynaecological problems.
"He disgusts me. I feel dirty, defiled, betrayed. It was a tsunami, I was hit by a high-speed train," she told the judge while describing the moment when she came to know about the heinous crime. The accused rapists include a local councillor, nurses, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, a soldier, a firefighter and civil servant.
Dominique Pelicot has also been charged with a 1991 murder and rape of a 23-year-old estate agent named Sophie Narme, and an attempted rape in 1999. He and the 50 other defendants face 20 years in prison if convicted of aggravated rape in the trial that is expected to last four months.
