Dominique Pelicot’s daughter revealed that her father kept hundreds of photos of her without clothes

Dominique Pelicot denied this Tuesday, September 17, 2024, in the presence of his daughter Caroline at the Avignon trial, having done to her the same thing he did to her mother, Gisèle, whom he drugged for almost ten years in order to rape her with other men.

>>> See more: Dominique Pelicot: “I am a rapist and now I must pay”

“I have never drugged you or raped you, you can’t say that… I have never done that,” The main defendant in this trial before the Vaucluse Criminal Court (south-eastern France) stressed in his first statement to his daughter, between sobs.

Caroline Darian, now 45, learned when it all came to light in the fall of 2020 that her father not only kept hundreds of photos and videos of her unconscious mother being raped by dozens of men he offered her to.

There were also images in her files of Caroline naked and apparently asleep, which she was not aware of or under what conditions they had been taken.and ever since she saw them she has been convinced that her father was also drugging her.

This afternoon, the daughter shook her head, as if in denial when he assured that he had not abused her.

Dominique Pelicot continued to insist and stated: “The only person I manipulated is my wife”. A comment that sparked murmurs of indignation in the dock, where 50 other men are accused – all but one – of having raped Gisèle Pelicot at the invitation of the first.

Some of the men reject the charge of aggravated rape, which could lead to a 20-year prison sentence, and claim that they did not know that Gisèle Pelicot was drugged and therefore had not given consent to have sexual relations with them.

The main defendant stated that When he began to stuff his wife with tranquilizers in 2011 so that he could sexually abuse her, taking advantage of the fact that she was unconscious, he was the only one who raped her.

The following year, Inspired by a sexual encounters website, he began inviting other men to join him in abusing his wife. and these practices continued until he was arrested in September 2020 for filming women upskirts in a supermarket in the city of Carpentras.

Dominique Pelicot reiterated this afternoon that everyone was aware that she was drugged and subdued because she warned them and also asked them for medical reports to verify that they did not have sexually transmitted diseases.

Although at the same time he admitted that he often did not know the real names of these individuals and was therefore unable to verify the validity of these reports when he obtained them.

Asked how he would rate his sexuality in quantitative and qualitative terms, Dominique Pelicot admitted that his behaviour was perverted and “too quantitative, which is the consequence of addiction.”

After being arrested in September 2020, he told police officers who were interrogating him that he sometimes encouraged men he invited to his house to rape his wife not to wear a condom because that turned him on more.

In any case, On Tuesday he stressed that he did not force them to come and that they all accepted the scenario he had designed.

In his statement, Dominique Pelicot said he was ashamed of having treated his wife in this way, considering that “without her I am nothing” and that it was also partly thanks to her that he was able to try to forget “the bad moments of life. I owe her a lot.”

In fact, when asked if he thinks he has lost her forever (the divorce between the two was formalised last month), he replied that “you must always keep hope. If not, it’s all over.”

The main defendant tried hard to establish a connection between the sexual perversions he committed with his wife and the traumatic experiences he said he had experienced in his childhood, starting with some assumptions sexual abuse by a doctor when she was 9 years old, having witnessed a rape when she was 14, or the abuse her mother suffered from her father.

Gisèle Pelicot, applauded

At the end of the hearing on Tuesday morning, Gisèle Pelicot was applauded by the public waiting for her outside, and she crowded into the courtroom to be able to witness or at least listen to the hearing. A man offered her a bouquet of flowers. Later, a woman stopped her in the street, gave her a kiss and encouraged her to carry on.

The trial, which began on September 2, is public because the main victim has refused to allow it to be held behind closed doors.

The reason given is that Gisèle Pelicot She wants all the details to be known so that everyone knows and so that what happened to her does not happen to any other woman again.

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