'It's a trial for our family': Gisèle Pelicot’s children confront rapist father over 'horror and atrocities'

AVIGNON, France (CN) — “I was in the kitchen with my wife and my three kids when the telephone rang,” David Pelicot — the son of Gisèle Pelicot and her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot, the man who invited over 80 men to rape her while she was unconscious — told a packed courtroom in Avignon on Monday.

“The conversation lasted five minutes — she let me know that this man, in the box, invited strangers to rape her,” he said, turning left to look at his father, detained behind glass.

For over two months, the courtroom has heard testimony from the 51 men on trial charged with raping Gisèle Pelicot. These were the ones police could find; at least 30 others remain uncharged.

Dominique Pelicot crushed anti-anxiety pills into his ex-wife’s wine glass and brought strangers he met on the internet into their bedroom. He took thousands of photos and videos of the assaults, which is now the foundational evidence of the trial, and what investigators used to find the accused.

The trial has brought worldwide attention to the issue of chemical submission — drugging someone for criminal purposes — in France, and more widely, how rape is treated in courtrooms around the world. Testimony has exposed enduring confusion about consent, not only during assaults but also in retrospect.

On Monday morning, journalists lined up in front of the court’s metal detector. There was not enough space for everyone. Inside, dozens of the men on trial sat with their lawyers; usually, only a handful are in attendance. The box holding detainees was so packed that some had to sit alongside Dominique Pelicot, who is usually isolated in a separate space with policemen.

The court heard from the former couple’s three children — David Pelicot, Florian Pelicot and Caroline Darian — for the first time since the trial began in September.

David Pelicot approached the stand to tell his story. After that five-minute phone call, he said he was physically sick. He booked a train to Mazan — the Provençal village where the Pelicots lived, with a population of 6,000 — to see his mother the next day, and picked up his brother, Florian, along the way.

As David Pelicot spoke, his father’s face was blank. Roger Arata, the head judge presiding over this case, took off his black rimmed glasses and rubbed his temples.

The siblings went to the police precinct where they were brought into a 100-square-foot office.

“They explained to us that on a computer they discovered thousands of photos, videos, of this man,” he said, turning and pointing to his father, raising his voice. “Where they said that they saw our mother getting raped by strangers.”

They moved out of the Mazan house in two days, and destroyed anything that would remind them of Dominique Pelicot’s existence.

“Today, Mom and us, the kids, have not one single photo of our family,” he said. Dominique Pelicot looked on, leaning his head into his fingers.

David Pelicot said that Dominique Pelicot was a good father who gave his children an education, a backbone and good values. He organized surprise birthday parties for the kids throughout their upbringing; his friends often told him, “David, you’re lucky to have a father like that,” he told the courtroom.

Then, David Pelicot addressed the men in the room.

“You’ll definitely ask what I’m waiting for from this trial,” David he said to Arata. “What I’m waiting for … is that these men who are behind my back, this man who is in this box, will be punished for the horrors and atrocities that they commit on my mother.”

But the family had learned something else in the police precinct. Gisèle Pelicot wasn’t the only family member in the files; there were also photos of Caroline Darian, the Pelicots’ daughter, while she was partly naked and asleep. The file containing the photos was called, “Around my daughter, naked.”

Dominique Pelicot has vehemently denied having any sexual relations with his children or grandchildren; the rest of the family is not convinced. Darian has since published a book, “Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler papa,” or “And I Stopped Calling You Father,” about how the photos have tormented her.

On Monday, the three siblings pleaded with Dominique Pelicot to tell the truth about what happened with his daughter.

“If you have a little humanity … you hear me?” David Pelicot said, raising his voice and turning to his father. “Tell us what you did to my son and my sister.”

“Nothing!” Dominique Pelicot yelled through the glass box, breaking protocol to speak out of turn. “I never touched my kids or grandchildren!”

“You talk after!” David Pelicot retorted, yelling, red in the face.

When Florian Pelicot walked up to the stand, passing near his brother behind the audience, David Pelicot gave him a kiss on the cheek and patted his shoulder in support.

“How do we reconstruct? How do we do it? How do we reconstruct?” he yelled in the courtroom, looking directly at his father.

Dominique Pelicot lightly shook his head back and forth, raised his eyebrows and lowered his head. He had nothing to say.

“I want you to be honest for us,” he said, addressing his father. “Because Caroline today, she doesn’t live anymore.”

David Pelicot said his father will remain a predator, and turned, looking around the audience in the room, addressing the women.

“For him, it’s a casting that we have in this room today.”

Caroline Darian was the last of the three siblings to take the stand. She walked slowly, and her steps were quiet.

“I know that you drugged me and abused me, and you’ll never have the courage to admit it,” she said, looking at her father.

“For me, this trial isn’t just Gisèle Pelicot, it’s a trial of our family, a historic trial of chemical submission in France,” she said. “I’ll continue to mobilize on the ground.”

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