“SCAR WILL NEVER HEAL”
Gisele said her former husband “had a lot of fantasies that I couldn’t fulfil”.
“But why did it come to this? I think what he wanted was Mrs Pelicot and not someone else,” she added.
“As I didn’t want to go to a swingers’ club, he thought he’d found the solution by putting me to sleep.”
“I’ve lost 10 years of my life that I’ll never make up for,” she added.
“This scar will never heal,” she added, struggling to hold back her anger.
The trial enters its final stages this week. Dominique Pelicot was also set to address the court before the civil parties’ deliver their closing arguments.
Prosecutors are then scheduled to give their closing arguments and make their sentencing demands for the defendants.
On Monday, the couple’s two sons and daughter spoke in court of their heartbreak.
Gisele’s daughter, who uses the pen name Caroline Darian, believes she was also assaulted by her father. In 2022, she wrote a book “Et j’ai cesse de t’appeler papa” (“And I stopped calling you dad”).
The case of 71-year-old Dominique Pelicot has sparked horror, protests and a debate about male violence in French society.
Dominique Pelicot has confessed to being a rapist. If convicted, he would emerge from the historic trial with a record as one of France’s worst sex offenders.
Of the co-defendants, only 14 have admitted the charges of aggravated rape, for which most of them face up to 20 years imprisonment if convicted.
The 35 others deny having raped Gisele Pelicot and maintain that they thought they were taking part in sex games.
Gisele said there was no distinction between them, adding they have “defiled” her.
“They all came to rape me,” she said. “I’m going to have to live with this all my life.”
“DEMON”
The court heard from the last of the defendants earlier on Tuesday.
Like many others before him, Philippe L., 62, said he thought he had taken part in a fantasy of a libertine couple. He insisted he had acted “on the orders” of Dominique Pelicot, describing him as a “demon”.
Gisele’s life was shattered in 2020 when she discovered that her partner of five decades had for years been secretly administering her large doses of sleeping pills to rape her and invite strangers to join him in their home in the village of Mazan, a list that grew to dozens over time.
Gisele Pelicot has said that for years she had strange memory lapses and other health problems and thought she might have had Alzheimer’s.
Many hope that the trial will help victims of sexual violence to finally be listened to and believed, and lead France to inscribe the notion of consent into the definition of rape in French law.
“One for all,” French daily Liberation said on Tuesday, putting a picture of Gisele on its front page and calling the trial “historic”.
The verdict is expected to be delivered by Dec 20 at the latest.
