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So many times, I said to myself how lucky I am
to have you at my side.
A kind and considerate man who I trusted entirely.
How can the perfect man have got to this?
How could you have betrayed me like this?
How could you have brought these strangers into my bedroom?
We're going to take you to France. This is a really distressing story.
A 71-year-old has admitted drugging
and raping his wife over a period of ten years.
He also invited other men to do the same.
This case has captured the imagination of the world.
It's unlike anything we've ever seen before.
Many questioning now, how such dreadful sexual violence
could take place on such a big scale.
He was able to manipulate everyone around him for years
without them having any idea of what was going on.
There are around 72 different men.
But they can't identify all of them. Who are these men?
The majority of the accused, they still deny responsibility.
He didn't tell me that he was going to drug his wife.
I don't know about the others, but for me, I'm not a monster.
The rest of the courtroom fell completely silent,
as Gisèle Pelicot said she wanted to address her ex-husband directly.
I've covered many court cases of rape.
Normally, there's one accused, there is one victim,
there's almost no one in the court. The courtroom is packed.
There's so much that's so unusual about this trial.
You have journalists and then lawyers
and lots of accused who's all around you.
I've never seen before in a courtroom
where you had the accused sitting all around you.
Most particularly something that's this sensitive.
In September 2024, a trial began that would shock the world.
At the center of it was 72-year-old Gisèle Pelicot.
Her husband Dominique admitted drugging and raping her
for almost a decade.
Alongside him stood 50 other men, all accused of raping
or sexually assaulting an unconscious Gisèle,
whilst Dominique filmed them. All have been found guilty.
Some of them have admitted to rape and pleaded guilty.
Others have said that they were duped,
that they were manipulated by Dominique Pelicot
into believing this was a sex game.
Some of them have said, "I didn't intend to rape that woman."
"I am not a rapist."
Despite the video evidence against them,
the level of denial has been aided by the French law around rape,
which has no mention of the word " consent".
Many of them have hung their defense
that they never intended to rape her.
They went there for a threesome and time and time again,
the main judge has asked each of these defendants,
"Did you talk to her? Did you get consent from her?"
And they have all said, "No, I did not talk to her."
"I never got consent from her."
But the long-lasting effect of this will be conversations in France
and across the world really saying, how did we get here?
Is the misogyny so ingrained in French culture?
The world has watched on and in a matter of weeks,
Gisèle Pelicot has become an iconic figure.
Her stand has highlighted issues of shame,
consent and sexual violence.
They tell me I am brave. I say it's not bravery.
It's will and determination to change society.
Seeing the images from courtroom and outside, you must remember
that every day, Gisèle is walking past the men
who are accused of raping her.
They have their hoods up, they wear masks, balaclavas,
they cover their faces in order to hide their identities.
And then you have this woman striding past them.
Entering the court to applause from the public gallery.
And every day, she has to find the strength to face them.
People across the world have shown their support for Gisèle Pelicot.
From messages scrawled on walls near the courthouse,
to mass protests of thousands across numerous cities.
This is a story about domestic abuse writ large with rape
and then you have strangers involved.
So, I think the horror of that, the relatability of Gisèle Pelicot,
and her brave and very rare decision to make the court case public.
And because she did that, that is why this is a global story.
This story that has become global has shaken Mazan terribly.
Situated 21 miles northeast of Avignon,
it's a small, medieval village with a population of just over 6000.
It was here the Pelicots lived,
and it was here that Gisèle suffered years of abuse.
It is a peaceful town which has been destroyed by this case
because people now equate Mazan with the rape cases.
People have had enough of hearing about the case.
They don't understand why people associate the name of their town
with this rape case.
Locals have seen the story labelled on French news as the Affair Mazan.
The name of their home has become inextricably linked to the trial
and splashed across the headlines.
Well, this story, my God.
It falls on us a bit like a meteor, like a meteorite,
because you could never have imagined something like this.
One local is Marion,
who runs a center for victims of sexual violence.
All at once, this quiet village is seen by the whole world.
Media from all over the world come to pick them apart
and we are not prepared for this.
There's frustration that the village has been tarnished
with only three defendants,
including Dominique being from Mazan.
Most of the suspects lived within a 40-mile radius.
But there is also tension and suspicion.
While the police have identified 50 of the men filmed by Dominique,
another 22 suspects remain at large.
And what's more, it's a village that it is traditional, patriarchal.
So a case like this, involving abuse, rape and sexuality,
is taboo, nobody talks about this.
Regardless of where these crimes took place,
so many are wondering how they could have happened.
It's scary that all this came out effectively by chance.
This all starts to unravel for Dominique Pelicot
when he's caught by a security guard
upskirting a woman in a supermarket in Carpentras.
He was filming under your dress with his phone!
The video that Dominique took of him upskirting this woman emerges.
And what we see is his face wearing a Covid mask
and his camera subtly slip towards her skirt.
He's then confronted by a security guard.
He was filming under your dress with his phone!
- No. - Yes! You file a complaint?
- He was filming under your dress! - That's four people.
It's true. We follow him on the camera, that's four times!
Come on, to the Police now!
When he's caught, it's the careless mistake of someone
who has been meticulous in keeping secret his perversion.
He's had this irrepressible desire to upskirt this woman.
We should have found them. There are three others.
You're a really disgusting person. Yeah, really disgusting.
That's why this case is so terrifying,
is that we know there are so many instances
of sort of "minor" sexual crimes like upskirting
that aren't investigated properly.
And it was only because the police took this action
that they found out what was going on.
When speaking to police,
Dominique claimed he had been overcome by urges
as his wife had been away from home for a month.
He said this is out of character.
Dominique Pelicot sits her down
and starts crying and tell her, "Gisèle, I've done a big mistake."
"I've done something stupid.
"I've been caught taking videos of women's crotch
under their skirts. Upskirting."
And she pauses a moment,
she thinks about it, 40 plus years together.
She knows she can forgive him,
but she says, "You must apologize to this woman."
"And if you do that ever again, I'm out. I'm leaving you."
And he apologizes, he says, "It'll never happen again."
But little does she know the scale of abuse
that he's perpetrated over the last ten years.
In 50 years of life together,
he had never made any obscene gestures.
I tell him, "I will forgive you this time,
but there won't be a next time."
He was filming with his phone. He was filming under your dress!
In September 2020,
Dominique Pelicot is stopped by a security guard
for upskirting women in a supermarket.
Inspired by legislation introduced in the UK,
it's an act that was made illegal in France in 2018.
The security agent plays a very important role in this story,
because if he hadn't insisted on the woman who was being filmed
going to the police station, she might have never done it.
She might have thought, "This guy's a weirdo, but whatever."
I'll just go home and forget about this incident and moving on.
Come on, to the Police! You stay there. You don't move.
Madam, I am counting on you to file a complaint.
But a video was leaked of that day in the French media,
and you can clearly hear the security agents saying,
"Madame, you need to go to the police."
"This is the fourth time he's doing it today."
"You have to press charges."
And she did it and that led to the police investigation.
Images in the French media show how cameras caught Dominique
using a bag with a hidden device.
So, he's been arrested for, you know,
what some people would say is a minor sexual crime.
It's a drop in the ocean compared to what's been really happening.
Later, police find in the bag that he had with him a camera,
a camcorder and some condoms.
Dominique Pelicot, he had two phones in his bag.
The police investigator found something on one of those phones.
There was only one app on the iPhone, it was Skype.
And so, he opened Skype, and he saw all these images,
photos of women lying unconscious on their beds
and naked men around them.
And he decided to call his superior
and to launch an investigation into this matter.
All of Dominique's digital devices from his home were seized.
On a USB stick, police discover a folder titled "Abuse."
Inside it, they found meticulously labeled folders
containing more than 20,000 videos and photos.
They appeared to show different men having sex with one woman.
At the time, police don't know what's going on.
They noticed that it's the same woman in every video,
and then later, they realize that that is Pelicot's wife.
With so much evidence, the police faced a long investigation.
Who were these men? Was any of this consensual?
Could they be watching one woman being subjected to years of abuse?
They began to dig into the lives of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot.
They walked a very private life, quiet life.
Had three children, raised them in the Paris region,
had seven grandchildren.
Then retired, moved down to the south of France as a typical family.
Nothing all that interesting or notable about them.
I think that makes it super relatable.
For all intents and purposes, they had a happy retirement.
She said they had quite a happy and fulfilling marriage.
He made a lot of meals, I saw that as him being attentive.
One night, he came to collect me at Avenal Station
after ten days with my grandchildren.
He had already prepared the meal.
Two plates were already in the oven.
I put olive oil on my potatoes, and he put butter,
so it was easy to see which plate was his.
We would have a glass of white wine together.
Often, when there was a football match on TV,
I'd let him watch it alone.
He brought me my ice cream to bed, my favorite flavor, raspberry.
I told him, "How lucky I am."
"You're a love, you really take care of me."
Despite their seemingly idyllic life,
there were signs that something might be wrong.
As early as 2013, when the couple first moved to Mazan,
Gisèle was having some health issues, so she's experiencing memory loss.
She was losing her hair, losing weight.
I think it was the memory loss, that really started to flag
to the wider family that something was going on.
It was this very awkward, weird sensation
where she felt like she was losing conception of time
and losing her life.
Her life was kind of escaping her. So, she went to three neurologists.
She thought maybe she had Alzheimer's.
Dominique was being incredibly supportive,
so Gisèle was being driven crazy, wondering what was going on.
But knowing that she had this supportive husband beside her.
He's telling her that she'll be fine,
that she's got nothing to worry about.
No one could tell her exactly what was going on.
No one could think of the unthinkable
and no one could imagine the unimaginable.
And it was only when Dominique was caught upskirting women in 2020
that suddenly things started to slip into place.
It's two months after Dominique has been arrested
for upskirting in a supermarket.
Gisèle has forgiven her husband,
but then, they are summoned to the police station.
They have a normal morning together in the house
and then they drive to the police station.
Gisèle thinks that this is linked to the upskirting incident.
There's this powerful moment when Gisèle sees her husband
being called upstairs to be questioned.
And she stays downstairs, and they exchange a look,
having no idea that this is the last time she'll see her husband.
The officer said, "I will show you some things
which you will not find pleasant."
He opened a folder, and he showed me a photograph.
It was hard to recognize myself dressed up like that.
Then he showed me a second photo and a third.
I asked him to stop. It was unbearable.
I was inert, in my bed and a man was raping me.
My world fell apart.
You can't stop yourself thinking,
what would it be like to be Gisèle in that moment?
The idea that you could be looking at somebody who is beside you
when you're in a moment of weakness and illness
and you feel so grateful to them,
and find out later that they've been betraying you
in one of the most awful ways imaginable, it's really sinister.
It's also the night where she tells her children.
She calls her daughter first and she tells her,
"I've got something horrible to tell you."
And she tells her that her father had been raping her for many years
and inviting unknown men to have sex with her while she was unconscious.
And it's just an earthquake, a shock wave in the family.
We have arrived in the town of Mazan.
Mazan is a fairly peaceful town, it's very quiet.
Where there is not much to do.
It's a small Provençal town where life is good.
We are approaching the place where he made them park their cars.
Close to the stadium which is right here.
This is where he told them to park, the men who he met on the internet.
Dominique Pelicot came on foot to meet them in person.
Sometimes he arrived in his underwear,
with a dressing gown on top,
and then they'd walk towards the house.
They had to walk about 100 meters to reach the cul-de-sac
where the couple's house was located.
This is it, it's here.
This is where it all happened from 2013 to 2020.
In a very peaceful, remote place, in a nice house.
And it's here that this horror scene happened for many years.
Gisèle has been confronted with videos showing her husband
and other men having sex with her while she is sleeping.
Investigators have to piece together how this could have happened.
The police establish from the videos
that this has been going on for about ten years.
In 2011, the Pelicots have been married for 40 years
and are living in Paris.
They are grandparents, living a happy, peaceful life.
Dominique had started doing the cooking at home
some years earlier.
So he took perverse pleasure in telling her,
"My darling, I'll make dinner, you can relax," etc.
Under the pretense of caring for his wife,
Dominique started to drug her.
Pelicot was using a drug called Temesta...
...an anti-anxiety medication.
Temesta, otherwise known as Lorazepam,
is used to treat anxiety and sleeping problems.
Dominique was using drugs he was prescribed by his doctor.
He would crush the drug, usually three pills,
and he would mix it in the food.
He often cooked with a lot of garlic, a lot of onion, spices.
Full of taste and fragrances to hide the taste and the color of the drug.
If he couldn't get it into her food, he would bring her ice cream.
High dosages of Temesta can cause someone to lose consciousness.
He brought me my ice cream to bed. My favorite flavor, raspberry.
I told him, "How lucky I am."
"You're a love, you really take care of me."
I never felt my heart race, I didn't feel anything.
I must have gone under very quickly.
The drugs made Gisèle fall into a deep comatose-like sleep.
If you gave her the Temesta too early, she would wake up early,
so you had to time everything.
There are a couple of occasions documented on video
which show Gisèle waking up and she still had no memory of this.
Pelicot was working out how to keep her unconscious.
The next day, I was more tired than usual,
but I was working a lot and thought it was that.
After drugging Gisèle, Dominique raped her.
This abuse continued for two years.
In 2013, the couple moved to Mazan.
There, Dominique escalated his crimes.
He began inviting strangers to take part.
Pelicot gave the men quite extensive instructions.
He would tell them to park their car at a nearby sports center.
So as not to arouse suspicion of the neighbors.
He'd tell them they weren't allowed to wear aftershave.
They shouldn't smoke before they came over to his home.
Dominque was precise and meticulous in his planning.
When they arrived, there was a very specific procedure.
They had to wash their hands and undress in the kitchen,
and especially not make any noise.
He even asked them to warm their hands on the radiator
because cold hands could wake Gisèle up.
Pelicot was doing everything he could to make sure that she didn't awake
or have any suspicions about what happened that night.
I think he really enjoyed giving those men that protocol.
It's, "I'm in control of this person. I own this person."
"If you want access to her, this is what you need to do,
because I'm the gatekeeper."
It's quiet, they're whispering to not wake her up.
This is someone who is, literally, in the deepest sleep.
She's like a corpse. You know, it's a body.
Her jaw is kind of dropping on the side, and she's snoring.
They do all these horrible things to her and she's not moving.
She's obviously passed out and she's not responding.
Often, she's naked, or with her clothes pulled up
and her panties pulled down.
The men come up behind her often,
they're often masturbating to get excited. And you see men...
sticking their penises inside her vagina, her bum,
her mouth without ever talking to her.
These are scenes of barbarity.
They regarded me like a ragdoll, like a garbage bag.
I am lying motionless on the bed, being raped.
The fetish really comes through.
It's something called Somnophilia and that is the fetish or the desire
to have sex with someone who is unmoving and unconscious.
Sometimes it's disturbingly called the "sleeping beauty" fetish.
This is a criminal act. He has not requested consent
from his wife to engage in this activity.
Police are only able to discover the extent of the crimes
because Dominique had been filming.
Dominique Pelicot was influenced by pornography.
He was thinking himself as a movie director.
He videos the sex scenes or the rape scenes.
There's videos that are on a tripod,
but also often the videos come in close.
You can hear her ex-husband directing them.
He'll say like "Softly" or he'll use some vulgar terms about her,
like "Stick it in the whore," or, you know, "She deserves this."
There were hundreds of files, photos and videos of the abuse.
He meticulously organized them and archived them.
He was making video montages of every rape that was committed
and he categorized them by sex scene, the duration, the date.
He classified all the video the same way
that you can find them on pornography websites.
This is someone who loves what they are doing,
but the planning, the organizing,
the rich fantasy world that someone like Dominique would live in
is a big part of who he was.
He would've been thinking about this all of the time.
Over the years, Dominique started to look elsewhere.
Turning his attention to his own daughter, Caroline.
Among these thousands of photos,
there were a number of her in her father's catalog.
A number of them had been erased,
but were reconstituted by digital experts at the police.
Dominique shared a different picture of her and her mother online
with degrading comments about them.
There was also a photo montage of her and her mother
coming out of the bathroom together
that was titled, "My Slut and Her Daughter."
Photos of the Pelicot's daughters in law were also found.
They found photos of them, not sleeping, but fully conscious,
taken with hidden cameras in the bathroom
when they were getting out of the bath, naked.
So there is Gisèle, and all the horror she has suffered,
but there is also the daughter and the daughters-in-law.
He was that opportunist. He was the constant voyeur.
Dominique had kept this secret life hidden for almost a decade.
The psychiatrist evaluation didn't reveal any mental illnesses
or serious mental disorders.
But he has two identities.
He needed to be able to show up and act like a loving husband,
like a loving father,
so that he could serve his greater purpose.
He was able to manipulate everyone around him,
his children, their friends, his wife for years
without them having any idea of what was going on.
For 50 years, I lived with a man
who I never would have imagined could be capable of this.
For me, it was someone I trusted entirely.
The deception continued as Gisèle's health deteriorated.
The signs were there,
but I never knew how to decode them.
He's seeing her getting worried about her health.
She's losing weight. He goes with her to see the doctors.
But he says nothing about what happens.
It's so sinister, like a nightmare.
The things she took as a sign of love during a time of weakness in her life
was actually how he was able to perpetrate these crimes.
Dominique had masterminded a campaign of abuse
and spun a web of lies.
But he hadn't acted alone.
Now, my connection to this case boils down
to about 20 minutes
when I was in the Pelicots' home 20 minutes.
The police investigation into the videos
reveals the scale of the abuse against Gisèle.
They count nearly 200 instances of alleged rape
carried out by Dominique Pelicot and 72 others.
They are able to identify 50 of the men.
It troubles me, the fact that I can't explain
how I got into this situation.
I had this encounter with Pelicot which was an explosion in my life.
It's a complete cross-section of society.
The ages range from 26 to 74.
There is a firefighter, a freelance journalist,
and some retirees too.
A soldier, a nurse, a prison guard, a baker.
You have men who are unemployed, and they have been described
by a Pelicot's lawyer as an example of "Mr. Average."
Three of the defendants are from Mazan itself,
including a neighbor of the Pelicots.
One of them Gisèle recognized at the police station.
I saw him now and then in the bakery, I would say hello.
He had once visited their home,
pretending that he was going to see Dominique about his bike.
He enjoyed cycling, he had many cyclist friends.
He came out to the Pelicot's house to see Gisèle in the flesh
before coming back to allegedly sexually abuse her.
I never thought he'd come and rape me.
The neighbor denies the allegation.
On other occasions, he had told men who were eager to see her
before coming to the house to meet them at the supermarket,
or he'd send photos or videos of her,
so they could see what she looked like.
The profile of a rapist is not someone
who you meet in a car park late at night.
The rapist can also be in the family or among friends.
The men traveled to Mazan from up to 40 miles away.
Dominique had found a method of recruitment.
Once the police start asking question,
they discover Pelicot was inviting men to his house via this website.
Dominique had signed up to a French chatroom called Coco.
It was sort of advertised as a dating site of sorts
where male users had their accounts hosted in blue,
women in pink, but couples were also in pink.
From the outside, it seemed innocuous,
but inside, it was very different.
Behind its childlike interface, the chatroom had a dark reputation.
The famous website linked with a lot of criminal activities.
A sort of free forum gathering pimps,
pedo-criminals, sex buyers.
Just being able to display sexual content about women,
being able to chat about women
in the most sexist dehumanizing language too.
Coco allowed users to hide their real identity.
Dominique used a pseudonym
and he found a chatroom called "Without Her Knowledge."
This is a discussion forum about image based sexual abuse.
That is where he invited men to join him and chat.
His nickname was "a couple seeking a man for a woman."
He posted pictures of his wife in underwear on this site,
and said, "Me and my wife are interested in threesomes."
"Would you like to be involved?"
The conversation would continue in private,
sometimes by text or on Skype.
He would ask the men for photos of their face and genitals.
In exchange, he sent photos of his wife.
The police say that Dominique's messages were clear.
He invited men to rape Gisèle whilst she was unconscious.
We know that from one of the adverts, he actually wrote,
"I'm looking for someone to abuse my wife asleep."
"You're like me, you like rape mode?"
One of the defendants speaks on camera for the first time.
He says that he was tricked.
He invited me to his house.
Through a ploy,
he had devised on the Coco chat site.
If he finds a pervert, he'll tell them I'm drugging my wife,
because he knows they will accept,
but when he is faced with someone normal,
he will use a trick. In my case, it was a trick.
We had spoken one night before and I didn't go round
because I found the man to be very focused on sex.
I wanted to talk about friendship, get to know each other, etc.
The next day, he did not give up.
He started talking about a friendly relationship.
And so, I trust him that he is a spokesman for his wife
and when he tells me that his wife consents, I trust him.
I never, even for a single second gave my consent
to Mr. Pelicot or those other men.
They committed rape.
Not for a moment did these men say to themselves,
"Is there something wrong?"
I think Dominique really enjoyed this sinister recruitment process,
finding those right people and using an online space
as a very clever filtering process to find those partners in crime.
The question that has stuck with me during this trial
is how many men did Pelicot approach who said no, but didn't report it?
Being online, it somehow removes any form of accountability.
It can desensitize people as well from the harms that they are causing.
Dominque looked for men to help him take his crimes a step further.
The only man who is not charged with rape in this case is Marechal.
He's also known sometimes as Dominique Pelicot's disciple.
Jean-Pierre Marechal and Dominique met on Coco.
Marechal, a retired lorry driver had learned from Pelicot
how to drug his own wife and invited Dominique
over to his home to rape her and used the same sedation technique
that Pelicot had been using on Gisèle.
Dominique went to Marechal's house,
and together, they raped his wife while she was unconscious.
At court, both men admit the drugging
and raping of Jean-Pierre's wife over a five-year period.
I think he enjoyed this idea of teacher, student.
I think that Dominique was trying was to find other like minds
who would engage in the same activity.
The ten years of abuse came to an end
when Dominque was arrested in 2020.
Four years later,
one of the most shocking trials in French history begins.
It's a very tense atmosphere.
Dominique Pelicot is taking this position, like, "I am guilty."
"I have admitted to everything."
"They all knew and I'm a rapist and they are rapists too."
If the accused denies raping or denies penetration,
then the court decides to show the videos.
Four years after Gisèle's world is turned upside down,
the rape trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men begins in Avignon.
Arriving at court to applause each day.
Gisèle is greeted by members of the public and the world's media.
This case has received so much attention
because Gisèle waived her right to anonymity.
And in doing so, this has allowed the world's media
to be able to be there in the courts and publicize the trial to the world.
Usually, trials that concern sexist and sexual violence in France,
they are behind closed doors.
When you open the door to this kind of trial,
you know that your life will be exposed and scrutinized,
so that's a very brave thing to do.
I wanted all women who are victims of rape
to be able to say "Mrs. Pelicot did it. We can do it too."
When you are raped, there is shame
and it's not for us to have shame. It is for them.
Journalists from all over the world come to this trial every day
from England, Spain, even Brazil, the United States, Australia, Japan.
It feels like this trial speaks to the whole world.
The attention that Gisèle has received during this trial
is like nothing she's ever experienced in her life.
She is a grandmother and a former logistics manager,
and suddenly, she has come to represent for any woman
who has ever been sexually assaulted. This paragon of bravery.
At court, Gisèle Pelicot walks past just some of the 50 men,
accused of raping her while she lied unconscious.
There's the pressure of all the individuals behind me
and I can sense they are trying to trip me up with their questions.
Thirty-five of the 50 men deny raping Gisèle.
One of the challenges in this case is that consent is not included
within the legal definition of French rape law.
There is a duty to prove that the accused had the intention
to actually commit rape.
Some of them have said, "It was not my intent to rape a woman."
"I'm not a rapist".
A couple of them said they first thought she was dead,
but they managed to reconcile that in their head
and go ahead with their plan.
Others feel like they're the victim here.
This defendant denies the allegation of rape.
I did not go with the intention of rape.
I'm not a rapist.
I'm the child of a battered woman.
As soon as I saw Pelicot at his house,
this man was scary.
It awakened a traumatic memory from my childhood
that terrorized me to the point that I lost all judgment
and I followed his directions and orders.
When I arrived, the woman was already asleep.
And I ask for permission. I start to touch her and she moves.
So in my mind, I tell myself that she's pretending.
And then he asks me to do this, to do that.
He tells me to insert my finger into her vagina.
I didn't even have control of my fingers.
Madame Pelicot, in our scenario was the victim of a rape.
As for me, I was a victim of terror. We are two victims.
There is one predator and two victims.
Many will tell the courts that something was off,
I wanted to leave, I wasn't thinking, but no one called the police.
This defendant claims that Gisèle must have noticed
signs of the abuse.
I find it hard to hear Madame Pelicot say
that she thought she lived with a perfect man.
She noticed things, but turned the other way because of love.
It's a message to women.
Even if you are in love, don't forgive anything.
Victim blaming happens often in cases of sexual abuse.
The victim is always questioned
and somehow, they're the ones to blame.
Lawyers of the defense asked her whether she's into threesomes
or whether she's into swinging.
No matter how many photos and videos she has as evidence,
they're still trying to blame her for it.
The comments that we heard in the defense,
arguments were archaic
and shows also the height of misogyny and the utmost contempt for women.
Some defendants used arguments saying,
"Dominique Pelicot, the husband gave his consent,"
as if the wife was the property of her husband.
Many saw the defense arguments as misogynistic,
but this defendant takes an opposing view.
I am a very feminist person.
I'm more sensitive to the cause of women than many feminists
who call themselves feminists.
Dominique has admitted everything since the beginning.
He also says that all the accused present in the room knew everything.
They knew she would be drugged and they knew why they were there.
I can't recall another trial anywhere else in the world
where a rape case that has so much evidence
and in that weird way, you know, Gisèle Pelicot has the perfect trial
because unlike so many other women, she has proof of what has happened.
After Gisèle's insistence, the judge rules
that the videos be shared in court.
When the first videos were shown in the courtroom,
there was a feeling of unease in the room
because it wasn't easy to watch with the victim next to you.
I preferred not to watch them all
because some of them were beyond comprehension.
When you sit in that courtroom and you see one video after another
of a woman snoring deeply, loudly echoing in the courtroom.
She was not a human being in that moment,
and I think that's really shaken a lot of people
as to how men see women.
There have been some powerful moments during this trial.
I'm thinking of when Gisèle Pelicot spoke for the first time.
The rest of the courtroom fell completely silent
as Gisèle Pelicot said, she wanted to address her ex-husband directly.
So many times, I said to myself,
"How lucky I am to have you at my side."
How could you have betrayed me to this point?
How could you have brought these strangers into my bedroom?
I am a woman who is totally destroyed.
I don't know if my whole life will be enough to understand.
Their daughter, Caroline, feels like she's the forgotten person here.
The police found two photos of her
in her underwear lying on a bed that she doesn't recognize.
So, she's convinced that she was also drugged and abused.
Dominique tells the court he took the photos of his daughter
because he was being blackmailed, but offers no further explanation.
He denies ever drugging or touching her,
but Caroline is convinced he is lying.
She gets red. She's frustrated.
She screams at him, you know, "You're a liar. You'll die alone."
She was hoping, I think, for some closure in this trial.
But there's lots with her that's unresolved.
During investigations police discover
that Dominique's criminal activity dates back much further.
What's emerged is that Dominique is potentially connected
to at least two other crimes from the '90s.
In 1999, an attempted rape of an estate agent in Paris.
It was a DNA match, so he admitted he was involved in this crime.
In Sophie's case, we have no proof
that it was Dominique Pelicot.
But in these two cases,
there are elements of the MO that are totally identical.
Two women who work as estate agents who are young, around 20 years old,
who are showing an apartment, who are attacked with a knife,
who are assaulted, who are sedated with ether to make them fall asleep.
These cases may seem connected,
but have no link from a legal perspective.
Investigations are continuing on these two cases and others.
Police suspect Dominique may be linked
to at least five unsolved crimes.
Gisèle Pelicot is making history.
She is leaving a legacy for all of us women.
Today, she is truly a symbol of the fight against sexual violence.
Locally, but also in France, Europe and all over the world.
This trial has had a huge impact in the French society.
Many protests have been taking place in solidarity with Gisèle Pelicot.
I would like to thank all the people who have supported me
since the beginning of this ordeal.
I was touched by this momentum, which gives me a responsibility.
All of you give me the strength to fight this fight to the end.
This trial is a reckoning for France and the law around consent,
but it's also allowing women to say, "We're here to be believed."
"Even if it's harassment on the street,
it's being inappropriately touched in a club."
"We're saying this is happening."
And Gisèle is standing up and saying,
"Listen to us when we say what's happening."
They're asking for 140 new measures from the government
to fight against violence against women.
They're asking that all victims are believed.
Because they're referring directly to the Gisèle Pelicot case.
Ninety-four percent of rape cases are dropped before they go to trial
so it means that there are many women in France
that have received no justice for what happened to her.
We're hoping that this could be a game changer in the fight
against rape culture and sexual violence in France.
For the local people of Mazan,
this case has been particularly poignant.
I hope there will be a before and after this case.
I can see it with the women that we work with,
it's really given them courage.
Gisèle is a formidable woman, very, very strong and brave.
She's shown us that we shouldn't feel ashamed
and that we too can reject this shame, this guilt we feel.
Latika and Marion decide to organize a march in Mazan
in support of Gisèle.
Gisèle was so touched by this
that she came to visit the association the next day.
Meeting Gisèle gave me the courage to reopen my case, to fight
and to tell myself that being a victim doesn't mean you are weak.
We can hold our heads high.
We can accuse without feeling shame, that's important.
And that's what she's shown.
Many women are hoping that this case will lead to law changes in France.
So, it isn't the case that lawyers need to prove intent to rape a woman
and actually it becomes a form of, you need to assort positive consent.
In December 2024, after a historic trial,
all the men charged with the rape of Gisèle Pelicot were found guilty.
The men have been awarded varying sentences.
Dominique received the maximum under French law, 20 years.
I don't think we'll ever forget the name Gisèle Pelicot.
She has become this iconic figure of strength
and somebody who has challenged rape myths
that are still held in 2024.
This case has the merit of showing
that rapists are everywhere in our society
and it shies away from what was a common widespread idea
that a rapist was some monster that was alienated from society.
By making this trial public.
Gisèle said that she wants shame to change sides.
But she's also doing this, so that society changes,
that attitudes change, so that the law changes too,
so that rape is seen differently, so that people can speak freely
and victims of sexual violence can identify with her.
And for this to serve as a lesson to everyone, in France,
but also across the world.
I think of the unrecognized victims whose stories remain in the shadows.
I want you to know that we share the same fight.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude
to all the people who supported me throughout this ordeal.
Subtitled by: Stefan Constantin Iyuno