Faced with finding a fulfilling hobby after their working days are over, some men take up gardening or golf.
Dominique Pelicot came up with another way to while away his spare time in the Provencal village of Mazan – he invited other men to rape his sleeping wife Gisele.
With breathtaking insouciance, the so-called Monster of Mazan offered this reason yesterday in court when explaining why he committed the ultimate act of betrayal.
During his working life – as an electrician and an estate agent – he always had his ‘nose to the grindstone’, he said, but after he retired, at 60, he felt ‘utterly idle’ and began visiting the perverted internet chatrooms where he got the idea for his twisted plan.
On one of these forays online, some 13 years ago, a male nurse had posted a compromising picture of his unconscious wife and boasted of drugging her for sex, while also describing the type of tranquillisers he used and the most effective dosage.
Soon afterwards, Pelicot copied the ploy by slipping these same pills into Gisele’s dinner, taking the perverted game to even greater extremes by inviting other men to rape her.
The court in Avignon heard how his ten-year rape campaign had endangered Mme Pelicot’s life. While in a stupor she had a car accident, and could have drowned in the swimming pool at their chalet in Mazan, her lawyer said.
Pelicot also allowed her to be raped on six occasions by a man who was HIV positive and did not use a condom.
In a courtroom sketch, Mr Pélicot appears at the courthouse in Avignon on September 11
Gisele Pelicot arrives at the criminal court in Avignon, southern France, September 17
Dominique Pelicot, 71, who is on trial for organising the rape of his wife
As he witnessed this ‘spectacle of decline’ and accompanied her to medical appointments for unexplained memory lapses, wasn’t he moved to consider stopping the rapes, Mme Pelicot’s lawyer pressed him.
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‘I saw her suffering, but the addiction was stronger,’ he replied, claiming the man with HIV had shown him a false negative test result.
He added: ‘I betrayed her trust. I should have stopped much earlier, even never started at all. But it was as if I was dragging someone else behind me, and I just couldn’t stop.’
Yesterday, Mme Pelicot listened with evident incredulity as the father of her three children admitted to what another lawyer called ‘one of France’s worst-ever crimes’.
For four torturous years, since his arrest, she had waited for him to stand before her and tell her why he allowed dozens of strangers to defile her. This was his day of reckoning.
Dominique Pélicot is accused of recruiting men online to assault his wife repeatedly over 10yrs
Yet if Pelicot was daunted by the prospect of facing the woman he delivered into the hands of like-minded deviants, if he felt contrite for allowing them to use her ‘like a bin-bag’, he had a strange way of showing it.
Yes there was the occasional sob as he pleaded – surely in vain – for his wife and family to ‘forgive the unforgivable’. However, most of his pity seemed for himself as he offered a litany of excuses for his descent, and strove to ensure that, whatever punishment he faces, his 50 co-defendants will be convicted with him.
Having delayed the proceedings to receive treatment for a urinary infection, Pelicot hobbled into the stifling Avignon courtroom with a walking-stick and wrapped in a woolly grey jersey and white scarf.
Unlike his wife, who had stood proudly before the five judges when giving her testimony, he was permitted to recline in a chair in the dock, propping a microphone on his paunch.
‘Good morning, Mr President, and hello everyone,’ he began his address, sounding like an ageing chat-show host. ‘Yes, I recognise the facts of the case in their entirety.’
Gisèle Pélicot arrives at court in Avignon, France on day eight of the trial
Gisele Pelicot’s daughter Caroline Darian (C) arrives for the trial of her mother’s former partner on September 11
Then, presumably to win sympathy, he recounted a series of alleged traumas that had marred his formative years; walking into the room as his brutal father tied his mother’s hands behind her back and abused her.
Being sexually assaulted by a hospital nurse when he was nine.
Witnessing his workmates rape a disabled girl on a building site when he was a 14-year-old apprentice.
‘One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert,’ he remarked almost haughtily.
All these events were forgotten at 17, when he met the ‘beautiful’ Giselle, he said.
‘I was crazy about her. She was the one who meant more than everything. I loved her well for 40 years and loved her badly for ten years. But I will always love her.
I will die like that. I ruined everything. I lost everything and I must pay.’
Turning to their sex life, Pelicot admitted that he was ‘always too demanding’ and ‘had trouble doing without’ – problems that worsened after they retired to Mazan and his wife often returned to the Paris area on her own to care for their grandchildren.
Caroline, the daughter of Gisele, last week said Pelicot was ‘one of the greatest sexual predators’ of recent years
Dominique Pelicot can be seen in this court sketch on the right
A black and white facial reconstruction of a younger Dominique P is seen in this handout image
‘There was a terrible lack when she was absent,’ he said, claiming that this was when his ‘addiction’ took hold and ‘everything went terribly wrong’.
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Monster of Avignon 'organised for dozens of men to rape his wife because he was bored in retirement'
It was then that he thought of emulating the nurse in the internet chatroom who had introduced him to ‘chemical submission’, he said. ‘He showed me things I thought were impossible… and it went up a crescendo.’
Pelicot admitted gaining some pleasure from filming the rapes, but said he did it mainly to avoid being blackmailed by the men he invited to his home.
However, towards the end, his debauchery began to rebound on him. Some of the men would follow his wife when she was shopping.
‘If you don’t let me [rape her], I’ll come and talk to her during the day,’ he claimed that one man threatened him.
By then, Pelicot said, he was in such despair that he considered killing himself by driving into a tree.
Instead, he deliberately got himself arrested for taking photographs up the skirts of women shoppers, knowing that the police would investigate his affairs and uncover the rapes.
A court drawing shows Mme Pelicot taking the stand, facing her husband and the 50 others accused of raping her
Several defendants claim Mme Pelicot was really awake when they had sex with her and consented as part of a swingers’ game. Pelicot strongly refuted this yesterday. ‘I am a rapist like all those accused in this room,’ he said.
He also denied a lawyer’s accusation that he was ‘trying to look like a superhero’ in an act of ‘bravado’ designed to save his wife’s reputation – and in so doing ‘sacrificing’ the other accused.
‘I didn’t pick up anybody. They all agreed to come to my house. I didn’t handcuff them to make them come. The tripod [he used when filming the attacks] was there for all to see.’
During his four years in prison awaiting trial, Pelicot said there had been times when he came close to suicide. Indeed, he had attempted to take his life after receiving a death threat from a fellow prisoner (on Saturday, the Daily Mail revealed how a picture of a coffin had been slipped under his cell door).
‘Today, I no longer want to die. I want to fight, I want to prove, I want to educate myself in prison, which I couldn’t do as a child,’ he said.
The Monster of Mazan certainly found an eloquent response when asked how it felt to be the protagonist in one of France’s biggest trials. ‘If I am a monument, then I’d be a very sad monument, and I don’t invite anyone to visit me. I don’t have that pretention,’ he said.
When the judge gave Mme Pelicot the opportunity to say how his words made her feel, she said she found it all ‘hard to listen to’.
She left the court to resounding applause from supporters.
Pelicot’s day of reckoning over, he hobbled pathetically back to his cell.
Additional reporting by Rory Mulholland