50 men, 10 years of rape: Who is Dominique Pelicot, the rapist who assaulted his former wife?

A court in France on Thursday gave the maximum possible sentence under French law to Dominique Pelicot, the ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot.

For nearly a decade, Dominique drugged and raped the victim and allowed other men to rape her while she was unconscious.

The lead judge of the court in Avignon, Roger Arata, read out verdicts one after the other against Pelicot and the 50 other men tried in the shocking case that stunned France.

Arata told Pelicot to stand for the sentencing.

“You are therefore declared guilty of aggravated rape on the person of Mme. Gisèle Pelicot.”

After the judge delivered the 20-year imprisonment verdict, Dominique Pelicot sat back down and cried. The 72-year-old could spend the rest of his life in prison.

The trial has triggered protest rallies around France in support of Gisele.

Hails courage

Dominique Pelicot hailed the courage of his now ex-spouse during his trial while admitting to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily-sedated wife.

“I would like to start by hailing the courage of my ex-wife, Gisele Pelicot. I regret what I did, making (my family) suffer… I ask them for forgiveness,” Dominique Pelicot said, asking his family to “accept my apologies” in his final statement to the court.

Pelicot children disappointed

The children of Dominique Pelicot believe that the sentence awarded to the guilty men in the case was too mild.

“The children are disappointed by these low sentences,” said the family member to AFP, asking not to be identified, after a court in Avignon sentenced Dominique Pelicot’s co-defendants to between three and 15 years in jail, with two of the sentences suspended.

20,000 photos and videos

The gruesome case and crime committed by Dominque Pelicot was uncovered when he was arrested for a separate upskirting offence at a supermarket in 2020.

Police then discovered more than 20,000 photos and videos on his computer drives, revealing the horrifying secrets that he had hidden from his now ex-wife for a decade, reported Reuters.

Old case

According to the Guardian, a decade before his arrest for upskirting in the Carpentras supermarket, in the summer of 2010, he was caught filming under women’s dresses with a small camera hidden in a pen in a supermarket in the Seine-et-Marne area east of Paris. 

However, he avoided going to court at the time by paying a €100 fine following his arrest.

Involved in another case

The entry of Dominique’s DNA collection into a national database by police revealed that it matched with a trace of blood found on a shoe at the scene of an attempted rape of a young estate agent outside Paris in 1999. 

At that time, Dominique was 46 and had previously worked as an estate agent himself.