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Gisèle Pelicot made her final address to the court, calling the things her husband allegedly did to her ‘unforgivable.’
Nov. 19, 2024, 10:45 a.m. ET
For more than 10 weeks, Gisèle Pelicot has sat in a courtroom in Avignon, France, quietly listening to the explanations of 50 men, including her now ex-husband, charged with raping, sexually assaulting or attempting to rape her while she was in an unconscious state, having been drugged by her husband.
She has heard most say that they were not guilty — that they went to her house lured by her husband, believing they were going for a threesome that she had consented to. She has heard some say they were trapped, played like checker pieces. She has heard some say they believe that he had drugged them, too.
Ms. Pelicot stayed in the courtroom while grim videos that her husband took of those encounters were played — revealing the men, sitting on benches nearby, touching her inert body and engaging in sexual acts, with her husband in the background egging them on, often with vulgar words. (Ms. Pelicot divorced him just before the trial began.)
On Tuesday, a day before closing statements were set to begin, she was given the chance to address the court one last time.
She was tired, she said, standing small and poised at the microphone.
“It’s difficult for me to hear that it’s basically banal to have raped Madame Pelicot,” she said, referring to herself. “This is a trial of cowardice.”
The trial of 51 men — one is on the run and being tried in absentia — has profoundly shaken the country since it began in September. Mr. Pelicot has pleaded guilty to crushing sleeping pills into his wife’s food and drink for almost a decade and then inviting strangers he met mostly on the internet to come to the house they had rented for retirement in southern France to join him in raping her.
