Dominique Pelicot was today jailed for 20 years for drugging his wife for years so he could rape her. He also invited more than 70 men to their family home to attack her while she was blacked out
Doctors missed vital clues rape victim Gisele Pelicot was a victim of her husband, despite her health deteriorating to the point she thought she was dying.
Dominique Pelicot, who was today jailed for 20 years, drugged his wife for years so he could rape her. He then invited 71 other men to come to their home in Mazan in the south east of France, to sexually assault her while she lay unconscious.
The rapes and sexual assaults saw Ms Pelicot stricken with gynaecological problems, and the drugging began to her effect her waking life too. She lost weight, clumps of hair fell out and she was riddled with anxiety as the years of attacks went on.
Gisèle came close to having suspicions. She once noticed a beer handed to her by her husband had a green tinge to it, but she quickly poured it down the sink. Another time she noticed a bleach stain, she couldn’t recall making on a new pair of trousers.
She remembered joking to her husband: “You’re not drugging me by any chance, are you?” He broke down in tears, with Gisele not realising how close to the truth she had come. He simply replied: “How can you accuse me of such a thing?”
Gisele had spoken out to say at the time she felt lucky to have her husband by her side as she navigated her health issues. She underwent several neurological tests to determine if she was suffering from Alzheimer’s or a brain tumour, as she feared, but the results didn’t explain the increasing tiredness and the blackouts.
Gisele saw several doctors during the 10 years in which she was being raped while sedated, yet none flagged that she may have been the victim of coercive control which Dr Andreea Gruev-Vintila told Sky News as the court case concluded, was a “systemic failure”.
She said: “None of the doctors made the connection between neurological problems or loss of memory and the possibility that she may have gone through domestic violence and course control, including, by using drugs,” the social psychologist said.
“So, this is one of the things that we need to be very, very clear about – our professionals need to be very much more trained than they are, and systematically questioning their parents about any situation to identify domestic violence and coercive control.”
She said: “Dominique Pelicot’s actions of drugging his wife, Gisele, demonstrate the constant, cumulative and non-episodic behaviours that characterise force of control in general. Coercive control is the most common and devastating means used to entrap women and children. The trial is a crucial opportunity to raise awareness about coercive control and push for significant legal and societal change in France.”
Today, Pelicot was jailed for 20 years as judges at the n Vaucluse Criminal Court, in Avignon, France handed out a total of more than 400 years to the other 50 defendants. The rapists included a firefighter, truck driver and nurse.
