Monster of Avignon jailed for 20 years after drugging and raping ex-wife Gisèle Pelicot
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To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video. Up Next. Gisele Pelicot – a woman who has became a feminist symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France – has today broken her silence on the mass rape trial.
![[Dominique Pelicot, 71, on trial for organizing the rape of his wife for 10 years by +50 people recruited on the internet. A 4-month trial begins today.]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/SEI_222064367-b883.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=195)
The 72-year-old said the trial had been a ‘very difficult ordeal’ and thanked all those who had supported her. Addressing the crowd outside the court in Avignon, she said: ‘I am thinking of all the other families affected by this tragedy and all the unrecognised victims. We share the same fight.’.
Gisele said she feels ‘very emotional’ and is thinking of her children and her grandchildren, who stood beside her as the verdicts of her 51 abusers were read out. ‘For them [children and grandchildren] I wanted to put this struggle forward,’ she said, adding that she never regretted choosing to waver her anonymity to the public.
![[One of the defendant arrives at the courthouse in Avignon on December 19, 2024, as the verdict is expected in the trial of a man, with 50 others, accused of drugging his wife and orchestrating multiple rapes over nearly a decade. A court in the French southern town of Avignon is trying Dominique Pelicot, a 71-year-old retiree, for repeatedly raping and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife Gisele Pelicot in her own bed over a decade. Fifty other men, aged between 26 and 74, are also on trial for alleged involvement, in a case that has horrified France. (Photo by Miguel MEDINA / AFP) (Photo by MIGUEL MEDINA/AFP via Getty Images)]](https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/SEI_233729008-76ab.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=646)
Her husband of 38 years, Dominique Pelicot, drugged her and invited scores of men to rape her while unconscious over a 10-year period, the three-month trial heard. During the hearing this morning at a court in the French city of Avignon, Pelicot, who was sat in the glass defendant’s box, was the first to be told of the verdict.
He was found guilty of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife for almost a decade, and inviting dozens of strangers to rape her. Pelicot has been handed a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for his crimes. He is also guilty of the attempted aggravated rape of the wife of one of the co-accused, Jean Pierre Marechal, Cillia, and taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine.
