Drawing by a court artist: defendant Dominique Pelico during a court hearing.
Photo: REUTERS.
At the end of the second week of the trial in France against the “monster of Avignon”, an answer could be found to one of the main questions: who really is 71-year-old Dominique Pelicot, who not only put his wife Giselle in bed with powerful drugs, not only took her to his house for nine years with dozens of strangers to rape her, but filmed everything on video. The evidence collected clearly indicates that the pervert suffers from a split personality. In addition, he so skillfully concealed his second, infinitely terrible self that no one in the family ever suspected him of terrible crimes.
Domingo did not deny that all the accusations against him were true. Too much evidence had been gathered against him. He collected it himself over the years. In the pervert’s house, the police found a huge collection of video files. Dominic catalogued them carefully. As if he was preparing for the inevitable end.
A RAPIST’S NEW TACTICS
In the first days of the trial, the pervert cried a lot. But then he chose a new tactic. He started to press the sting. Dominic, for example, claims that his father beat him when he was a child. Apparently, all the love of the parents went to the brother, who suffered for years.
Peliko also described how, at the age of nine, he was abused by a nurse when he was hospitalised with a head injury. “I was on IVs for several days, I went through hell. He raped me in every possible way,” the pervert tried to cry in front of the judge.
BROTHER BROTHER “DATED”
But almost everything said by the accused was refuted by his older brother. His name has not been revealed. In an interview with Paris Match, he spoke about the fairytale childhood he and Dominic shared. They lived on the Chateau d’Oblaise estate. In this 19th-century castle, his father was responsible for the maintenance of the electrical equipment. 80 hectares of land became their playground, where they hunted frogs, built houses and rode sheep, like in a rodeo.
The eldest brother says that they were very close as children. They shared the same room for 15 years and sometimes even slept in the same bed. According to him, his parents “adored and spoiled not him” but Dominic.
In an interview with Paris Match, he also recalled the “incident with the nurse”. Dominic told his parents that a man had touched him inappropriately. But his mother investigated and discovered that there were only female maids that night.
The eldest brother never believed the story and is convinced that Dominic simply surfaced it and embellished it to “make himself look like a victim and minimize his responsibility” for the terrible crimes against his wife.
His brother also disagreed with Dominic’s story about his cruel father. He insists that his parents fought, but only once did it escalate into physical violence.
His brother also questioned Dominic’s claim that he had to become an apprentice electrician because his parents spent all their money on financing the “elder”‘s medical degree. In fact, he was a “mediocre” student and barely made ends meet with his professional qualifications. However, many French experts pointed out, it cannot be ruled out that rivalry between the brothers played a role in the discrepancy in the testimonies.
TWICE down the hall
After working in real estate, Dominic became a technical sales agent for fire alarms and computer equipment. In 1971 he met Gisele. Two years later they married. They were both 21 years old. They soon had children: two sons and a daughter, David, Florian and Caroline.
Friends said they were a “very devoted couple” and their home was considered a “paradise.” Even Gisele herself insisted in court that they were happy and that her husband was a good man. This was confirmed by the children.
The defendant’s wife, Gisele (pictured), insisted in court that they were happy and that her husband was a good man.
Photo: REUTERS.
The Pelicot family also considers it quite normal that Dominic and Giselle have been married twice. The fact is that Dominic has financial problems. In 2001, after the bankruptcy of the electricity company he founded, he and Gisele divorced so that his “beloved” would not be affected by his debt settlement plan. It is believed that they kept their relationship a secret. And then the couple remarried in 2007. Giselle’s stable income allowed them to save enough to rent a beautiful bungalow with a swimming pool and a lush garden.
Prude and PERVERTED
This is where the main mystery of this monstrous story appears. Dominique spent his days playing pétanque (a national Provençal ball-throwing game) at a local club. He often rode his racing bike. And his wife looked after their grandchildren and worked in the garden. In other words, the quiet life of the French bourgeoisie in their old age.
When police asked all members of the Pelico family if they had noticed anything strange about their father, they all remembered only one thing: Dominic spent all his free time in front of the computer. Even when his children and grandchildren were home, he would sit smoking until late at night, “glued to the screen.” But no one suspected how perverted his online activities were.
After arranging a meeting via chat on the now-defunct site, whose servers had been seized by police, dozens of men visited the Pelicot family home, where they sometimes spent up to six hours raping a sleeping Giselle while Dominique was behind the camera. Sometimes he himself took part in the “parties”.
Despite all this, his older brother considered the father of three to be something of a prude. “He couldn’t stand dirty jokes,” he recalled in an interview with Paris Match. – If we were watching television and they talked about, for example, swinging, Dominic was the one who was most surprised. It’s crazy, his double life.”
GOOD DAD
Peliko’s eldest son told the court that nothing in his father’s behaviour indicated any deviation. Caroline added: “We were very close to him.”
In her book And I Stopped Calling You Dad, Dominic’s daughter described him as a caring, kind and active man in his youth. She described how her father supported her in her studies and sports.
Caroline, Dominique Pelicot’s daughter, leaves the court hearing.
Photo: REUTERS.
She accompanied her daughter to school and to the dance studio, and took her to and from parties when she was a teenager. I supported my daughter’s career choice. And later she showed the same affection for her grandchildren, splashing around with them in the pool near the house.
“I thought my parents were happy,” she wrote in her book. “I tried in vain to discover and understand the true personality of the man who raised me. Even today I am amazed by the fact that I saw nothing, suspected nothing. I will never forgive what he did for so many years. However, I still have the image of the father I thought I knew.”
FIFTY ACCUSED
This week in court, Gisele spoke emotionally for 90 minutes about how her husband’s atrocities drove her to the brink of suicide: “We had everything, we had a wonderful life. I don’t understand how this could happen. I just wanted one thing: to disappear.”
In order to cope with the critical situation, almost all members of the Peliko family had to seek psychological help. “It is not easy. I had to face the facts: I lost my brother,” said the eldest brother.
The trial will last until Christmas. Prosecutors have charged a total of 51 men. This is the largest number of defendants tried together in France.
Most likely, all of them will go to prison for many years. But even if justice is finally done, the lives of the Pelicot family are shattered by Dominic’s betrayal.
Caroline asked the crowd in court: “What will you do if you find out your father is one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 years?” There was no response.
Beatriz Zavarro, Dominic Pelico’s lawyer, speaks to reporters.
Photo: REUTERS.
I WAS NOT ALONE
Franceinfo has learned that a similar case was investigated in French Polynesia in 2010. Anesthesiologist Philippe Challand, who was 48 at the time of his trial, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and 10 years of disqualification from Polynesian soil for sexually assaulting minors aged between 7 and 14. In his crimes, he, like Peliko, used psychotropic substances.
The pervert worked at Hao Military Hospital (where civilians were also treated). At his trial, he admitted that between 1993 and 1996, in intensive care and under anesthesia, he raped or sexually abused 41 children.
In May 2006, his brother-in-law discovered videos of a man raping children and alerted the gendarmerie. The police then had to identify the victims and tell them what they had suffered.
Franceinfo points out that medical staff and the general public are often poorly aware of the symptoms of exposure to chemicals, which remain difficult to detect and therefore extremely difficult to prove. Apparently, both Peliko and Shalland would have gotten away with it if it were not for their “passion” for the video.
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