What Dominique Pelicot who drugged his wife to be raped by 50 men was really like - from his claim that HE was a rape victim to why he married his wife twice

He was a bit of a loudmouth with a tendency to make up stories, and his fondness for gambling and living beyond his means plunged his family into a financial mess. 

Those around him recognised that Dominique Pelicot certainly wasnt perfect, but one flaw he did not display any sign of was an inappropriate attitude to women. In fact, his older brother found the father-of-three something of a prude. 

He couldn’t stand dirty jokes, he recalled. If we were watching television and there was talk of swinging, for example, he was the most shocked. Its crazy this double personality, its Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Indeed, this dual personality is one of the most unfathomable aspects of the sensational monster of Avignon rape trial that has gripped and horrified France.

Pelicot, a 71-year-old retired electrician, oversaw a near-decade-long campaign of abuse against his wife Gisele between 2011 and 2020 in which he systematically drugged his wife unconscious and invited dozens of strangers to their family home to rape her on camera - sometimes joining the attacks himself.

In an interview with Paris Match, his older brother - who has not been named - has given a fascinating insight into Dominiques character, their storybook childhood and his claims he was raped as a child by a male nurse.

Dominique Pelicot pictured on holiday to the Isle of Ré in 2018 with his wife Gisele - two years before he was arrested for drugging her and arranging for men to rape her 

Dominique and Gisele Pelicot on their first wedding day in April 1973, when they were 21 years old. The couple went on to have three children and later divorced 

His older brother said that they were very close as children, sharing the same room for 15 years and even the same bed at times. 

He recalling how Dominique was adored and pampered by his parents. As the youngest of the family, he was their darling.

The brothers enjoyed an idyllic childhood on the Château dOublaise estate, home to a 19th century castle in the Centre-Val de Loire countryside, where their father was in charge of electrical maintenance.

With 80 hectares of land as their playground, they went frog fishing, built cabins and rode on sheep as if they were in a rodeo. 

Perhaps it was growing up in this carefree rural idyll that inspired an overactive imagination in Dominique, who had a tendency for making up stories.  

Decades later, one of these childhood tales resurfaced in pre-trial hearings with the investigating judge when Dominique recalled being abused by a male nurse at the age of nine, after being admitted to hospital with a head injury. 

The Pelicots remarried in 2007. They had initially split to prevent Gisele being liable for debts her husband had run up 

Gisele Pelicot arriving at court on day 8 of her husbands trial in Avignon 

I was on a drip for several days, I lived through hell, he raped me in every possible way, he told the judge. 

His brother recalled the incident, agreeing that Dominique had reported being inappropriately touched by a male nurse at the time, but had never said anything about rape. 

Whats more, he cast doubt on his brothers story entirely, saying that their mother had made inquiries and found that there were only women on duty that night.

His brother never believed the story, and is convinced that Dominique has only resurfaced it and embellished it to victimise himself and minimise his responsibility in the horrific crimes against his wife. 

Dominiques violent father was also cited as a possible explanation for childhood trauma that left him damaged, but his brother disagrees with this version of events.

He insists that his parents did argue but that it only ever became physical on one occasion. 

Also in dispute is Dominques claim that he had to become an apprentice electrician because his parents ploughed all their money into financing his brothers medical degree. 

He was a mediocre student according to his brother, and only scraped by in his trade qualification, although these discrepancies in their accounts of the past could, of course, be put down to sibling rivalry. 

After a stint in real estate, Dominique became a technical sales agent for fire alarms and computer equipment, and while working at one of these companies he met Gisele in 1971. 

Two years later they were married, both aged 21, and their children followed quickly - two sons and a daughter, David, Florian and Caroline. 

They were a very devoted couple, according to friends, and this seems to be more than just a front put on for the outside world. 

Even Gisele herself has insisted they were happy and that her husband was a good man - an assertion backed up by her children. 

However, things were not perfect behind closed doors and Dominique was having financial problems.  

In 2001, after an electrical engineering company he created went bankrupt, he and Gisele divorced so that she would not be affected by his debt settlement plan. 

Its believed that they maintained their relationship privately, and the couple married again in 2007.

His brother also speaks of Dominique living beyond his means and says that he lent him €75,000, which he never got back. 

Caroline, 45, told the Avignon court on Friday how she believed her father had drugged her too, after police showed her photos of her lying unconscious on a bed in her mothers underwear

Caroline and her two brothers David and Florian had enjoyed an idyllic childhood and for most of their lives were blessed with a stable and happy family life

However, while he knew his younger sibling wasnt perfect, his brother was as shocked as everyone else when he was arrested and his horrific crimes came to light. 

He admits hes sought help from a therapist to cope. 

 Its not easy. I had to face the facts: I lost my little brother, he said. 

Pelicots crimes took place at the family home of the Pelicots, in Mazan, a cozy village nestled in the foothills of Mont Ventoux in the green haven of Vaucluse, was a tender place filled with wonderful memories for their grown-up children. 

According to those closest to him, the Pelicots were a textbook happy family and their home was a paradise that they thought was immutable. 

Recalling a typical family gathering, their daughter Caroline said of her father: You light the fire on your little barbecue and start the grilling, you raise your head and smile at me. Around, the walls of the house never stop reflecting this beautiful sun that brings us all joy. Tom swings, Paul brings the wine. A terrace, a summer, a family.

Her next words, however, bring a dramatic change in tone: I hate you. Have you always been unhinged? And we would have seen nothing? Can we miss a father? But who are you really?

, all reports suggest a harmonious household where a middle class couple were living a very typical lifestyle for a retired couple in their 60s who were enjoying a quieter pace of life and all the joys of being grandparents.  

Dominique spent his days playing boules at the local club and cycling on his racing bike. Hed made plans with is son-in-law to take his grandson out on his bike on the route of the Tour De France in the last message they ever exchanged before his arrest.

His wife, meawhile, spent her days looking after their grandchildren and pottering  about the garden. 

One small detail stands out from Dominiques routine, albeit only with the benefit of hindsight. 

Caroline recalls her father spending all his free time at his computer. Even when his children and grandchilldren were at home, he would sit there vaping late into the night with his eyes glued to his screen.

If they thought, perhaps, that their father spent rather too much time on his computer, what nobody had any inkling of was the depravity of his online activities. 

Having agreed to meet via a chatroom on a now defunct website whose servers were seized by police, dozens of men frequented the Pelicot family home, where they sometimes spent up to six hours raping an unconscious, snoring Gisele while Dominique stood behind the camera - but sometimes participated himself. 

Yet the Pelicots adult children all said that they had no reason to suspect their father had waged one of the most vile programmes of sexual abuse to have ever reached the countrys courts. 

Their eldest son has insisted that nothing in Mr Pelicots behaviour suggested any deviance and that he had always fulfilled his role as a father, while Caroline told Paris Match earlier this year: We were very close to him.

In her 2022 book entitled And I Stopped Calling You Papa, published under the pen name Caroline Darian, Dominiques estranged daughter described him as a considerate, kind man who was heavily involved in her youth.

She explained how Mr Pelicot - whom she now calls her progenitor - encouraged her in her studies, her projects and her sporting activities. 

The mother-of-three had moved to the Provence village with her husband, former electricity worker Dominique, from Villiers-sur-Marne, near Paris, in 2013

He accompanied her to school and dance classes, drove her to and from parties in her teens and supported her professional choices - and later went on to show the same care for his grandkids, splashing about with them in the swimming pool in Mazan. 

I think of us as happy, I thought my parents were, she said in her 2002 book, entitled And I Stopped Calling You Papa, published under the pen name Caroline Darian.

She admits that even now, its a struggle to comprehend how the father she loved and the man whose heinous crimes are detailed in court are the same person. 

I tried in vain to detect and understand the true identity of the man who raised me, she said. 

Even today, I wonder about the fact of having seen nothing, suspected nothing. I will never forgive what he did over so many years. However, I am left with the image of the father I thought I knew. Despite everything, it is anchored in me and in the background. 

She speaks of dreaming about her father before facing him in court and admits she misses him. 

He talks to me, we laugh, we are together, she said. Waking up brings me back to the nightmare: now. And I miss my father. Not the one who will stand before the judges; the man who took care of me for forty-two years. Yes, I loved him so much before discovering his monstrosity. 

She also admits to struggling with letting go of all empathy thats mixed with her anger and shame, and has wondered how he was coping during his four years in prison ahead of the current trial. 

Was he able to adapt? Does he suffer from our absence, from the solitude, violence in isolation? A second voice squeaks: "This is only justice, when we see the harm he has done to us. To Mom, to us, to our family. Let this deviant manage, he reaps what he has sown.

Sometimes a feeling of abandonment arises. It invades me, crushes me. Dad, why are you so far away from us? I thought I had mourned my father. The truth is that this trial awakens the little girl in me. The one who has not yet succeeded in killing the paternal image. 

And Im afraid I wont be able to hate him. Perhaps this trial will help me achieve some form of definitive mourning. My father is alive and well, but perhaps I will never be able to tell him straight in the eyes that he counted, and ruined part of my life, extinguished the spark before, trampled on trust that I naturally felt towards men. 

Dominique and Gisele Pelicot, met as 18-year-olds in 1971 and married two years later, beginning a passionate and strong relationship that blossomed over forty years. 

As the pair approached their 60s, they wanted to trade the town of Villiers-sur-Marne near Paris, where Dominique had worked for French energy company EDF while Gisele built a 20-year career as a company manager, for sunnier climes in the South. 

Money hadnt always been easy to come by - the 2008 financial crash ruining Dominiques foray into the world of real estate and attempts at entrepreneurship - but Giseles stable income meant theyd saved enough to rent a lovely bungalow with a pool and a lush garden. 

They settled into a rosy retirement in Mazan, a cozy village nestled in the foothills of Mont Ventoux in the green haven of Vaucluse, and revelled in their role as doting grandparents, hosting the whole family for holidays and enjoying late evening meals out on the terrace in the summer haze.

But it was around then that Caroline and her siblings began to notice their mothers health steadily deteriorate.

Gisele P. re-enters the courthouse during the trial of her husband accused of drugging her for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan

Gisele began complaining of symptoms of fogginess and disorientation, and on several occasions suffered memory loss so severe that she began to suspect Alzheimers disease.  

Doctors performed brain scans but were left at a loss as to why Gisele was experiencing such crippling amnesia, all while battling what seemed to be a growing abundance of gynaecological problems, weight loss and debilitating fatigue. 

The true cause of her physical and mental malaise, revealed in 2020, turned out to be darker and more perverse than the even the most sordid and cynical observer could have dreamt up. 

Mr Pelicot, the once warm and dedicated father and husband, is now on trial for a near-decade long campaign of drugging and sexually abusing his wife for the camera - along with 50 other men he invited to the family home to take part in the heinous activity. 

All 51 men stand accused of aggravated rape - the largest number of defendants to have been tried together in recent years anywhere in France.

Prosecutors were unable to identify several other individuals believed to have participated in the barbaric operation who are now set to escape justice. 

Gisele Pelicot speaks to the press alongside her lawyer on September 5, outside the courtroom in Avignon, France

Madame Pelicot is determined that the public knows that she played no part in her husbands warped sexual fantasies that he played out at their picturesque chalet home in the Provence village of Mazan (pictured)

A court drawing shows Madame Pelicot taking the stand, facing her husband and the 50 others accused of raping her

Dominique Pelicot broke down in court when his wife described their once happy family

The son of Gisele Pelicot, Florian (L) and her daughter Caroline Peyronnet (R) leave the criminal court in Avignon, France, 05 September 2024

Thats not to say there werent some signs in the years prior to the skin-crawling revelation of Dominiques crimes that the Pelicots once blooming relationship was strained.

Writing about one incident in the summer of 2018, Caroline recalls how her brother went to visit their parents for an evening meal only to see his mother practically falling asleep at the dinner table.

Only a few minutes after sitting down Maman was swaying in her chair as though she was drunk, he told Caroline.

Suddenly her whole body was drained of energy, like a rag doll.

It happens. Its better if I take her to bed, his father was reported as saying, feigning the role of a concerned husband acting in his wifes best interests.

In reality the cocktail of drugs, poured into her glass of rosé, was beginning to take effect, Caroline said. 

As the various symptoms of her abuse grew ever more difficult to ignore, Mr Pelicot committed to a deplorable approach of manipulation and gaslighting to avoid suspicion. 

In the late eighties, Gisele had embarked on a two-year affair with the only other man she ever willingly slept with besides her husband, according to her testimony. 

The couple overcame the incident and remained happily married, going on to have three children. 

But when his wife complained of severe pain and tested positive for a sexually transmitted disease after years of having been raped by strangers, Mr Pelicot seized the opportunity to blame it on another episode of supposed infidelity. 

Caroline claimed that when Gisele told her husband she needed treatment for the unexplained illness, he remarked: So, what are you doing with your days? and accused her of playing around while he was out playing boules or cycling. 

Despite the nasty accusation and mounting evidence something was wrong, the loving wife remained unaware that her husband had anything to do with her malaise. 

So blind was Gisele to Mr Pelicots horrendous misdeeds that she was even willing to forgive him when he was arrested by police in September 2020, after he was caught snapping pictures up the skirts of female supermarket shoppers. 

Police investigating the case confiscated Dominiques computer and later discovered he had meticulously recorded, filed and catalogued a near-decade-long string of incessant abuse. 

It wasnt until officers sat Gisele down and confronted her with the undeniable evidence that the unconscious, gasping body she was watching being violated was her own did her litany of hitherto inexplicable symptoms make sense.

That realisation, of course, brought her entire world and that of her cherished family crashing down. 

Village of Mazan where Dominique Pelicot and his wife Gisele Pelicot lived. When she tested positive for a STD, Mr Pelicot said she must have been cheating on him when he was out playing boules

Madame Pelicot this week was forced to relive the trauma that she experienced when police investigator showed her graphic films of her being raped repeatedly by her husband and dozens of strangers

In a powerful 90-minute-long testimony before the court in Avignon this week, Gisele opened up on how the discovery drove her to the brink of suicide and left her daughter in a psychiatric ward. 

We had everything, we had a great life. I dont understand how this could have happened. 

I only wanted one thing and that was to disappear. I told myself: I am going to get in my car with my dog and end it all.

I had to tell my children that their father was in custody. I called my son-in-law and told my daughter and told them: He raped me. Then I heard my daughter screaming a deep cry that I cannot get out of my head. 

When I told my sons about this, I dont think they really understood. They withdrew. 

[That] evening, the children rang all the time saying dont disappear... they were worried I might die.

Caroline herself recounted to the judge the moment she heard, from her own mother, exactly what kind of monster her father was. 

Then my mother called me to say that there was a problem with my father. I imagine that he is intensive care, that he is dying.

But she tells me that my father has been drugging her for years so that strangers can rape her in her own bed.

She says she has seen photos of what happened to her and that the police want to show her videos of what happened.

I totally lost my foundations. Fortunately my husband [Pierre] was there and my six year old son too. We took him away so that he did not hear his mothers screams.

Caroline later learned that Mr Pelicots repulsive exploits were not limited to his wife. 

She too had been photographed half-naked and unconscious by her father - a fact police proved when they pointed out one of the vulnerable bodies in his stack of images bore her unmistakable birth mark.

I discover that my father photographed me without my knowledge. I understood immediately that it was me in those photos. I do not sleep like that. So I strongly believe that he drugged me, she said. 

Gisele Pelicot, 72, told the court in Avignon how she wanted to disappear when police revealed the dark truth to her after arresting her husband in late 2020. Pictured: Gisele Pelicot (R), accompanied by her son David (C) and Florian (L) as they leave the criminal court in Avignon, France, September 5

Gisele Pelicots daughter Caroline enters the court room to give evidence against her dad Dominque Pelicot. Pictured: Artist drawing from inside the court of Caroline in the dock

Mr Pelicot and 14 of his co-accused have admitted their part in Frances worst rape case. 

But another 35 men – from all walks of life – deny that they forced themselves on Madame Pelicot while she was unconscious, claiming that she in some way consented.

Gisele has unequivocally rejected their claims and is outspoken about her desire to see them all brought to justice.  

Some of the defendants admit the facts, others contest all the facts, and others confirm they were present but deny it was rape, her lawyer said.

You caught four sexually transmitted diseases and were exposed to HIV six times. What have you got to say to people who claim you consented to all this?

The brave mother-of-three replied: All I have to say is, its an insult to my intelligence. These individuals were totally aware of what state I was in. I never knowingly took part in any of these things.

I was a dead woman and these men take advantage of me, they defile me, they treat me like a bin bag. 

How can you even try and make people think that a woman would knowingly take part in all this?

It remains to be seen whether every defendant in the scarcely believable case will be found guilty, with the trial set to stretch until Christmas.

Mr Pelicots scrupulous documentation of the abuse, not to mention the trove of vile messages he exchanged with each man who visited the family home, means prosecutors were able to charge 51 people in total. 

But even if justice is eventually served, the halcyon memories shared by every  member of the Pelicot family will remain forever tainted by their patriarchs inescapable betrayal. 

After all, as Caroline asks: What do you do when your father is one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 years?