At the Mazan rape trial, the conflicting feelings of the accused's wives

Photo: Christophe Simon Agence France-Presse About fifty men are accused of rape after having responded to Dominique Pelicot's invitation to come and rape his wife, Gisèle, at their marital home in Mazan, in the south of France.

David Courbet – Agence France-Presse in Avignon

Published at 7:08

• Europe

Anger, incomprehension, but also compassion, even total denial: at the trial of a husband who drugged his wife to have her raped by dozens of strangers for a decade in France, feelings are mixed among the partners or ex-partners of the co-accused, some going so far as to take responsibility for their actions

For Vanessa P., who has “no more consideration for” her ex-partner, the anger is cold.

Like the fifty other men on trial, aged 26 to 74, Quentin H., 34, then a prison guard, had responded to Dominique Pelicot's invitation to come and rape his wife at their marital home in Mazan, in the south of France. France.

“When you see what he's accused of, you can doubt everything”, “he's a manipulator”, added this nursery nurse, without glancing at her former partner.

“Manipulator,” a term also used by Émilie O., 33, about Hugues M., 39. Their marriage ended in November 2020, when the facts against Dominique Pelicot and her husband were revealed. Along the way, she discovered the multiple extramarital affairs of the man who shared her life.

Photo: Benoît Peyrucq Agence France-Presse Court drawing by Dominique Pelicot, September 17, 2024

To “protect children”

“I thought I was living a peaceful and fulfilling life, but I was wrong.” Since then, she has lived with the doubt that she herself was a victim of chemical submission, like Gisèle Pelicot, who was knocked out with anxiolytics and raped for ten years by her husband and around sixty men he had recruited on the Internet, 50 of whom have been identified and are being tried alongside him.

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A doubt that Cilia M. no longer has: between 2015 and 2018, her husband, Jean-Pierre M., 63, and Dominique Pelicot, 71, raped her around ten times by reproducing on her the process used on Gisèle.

“He was a wonderful person. “He destroyed us,” she testified, adding that she would “never forgive” her ex-husband, whose name she has kept and against whom she has refused to file a complaint, in order to “protect their five children.”

Others are still wondering, even if it means finding excuses for their ex-partners.

“He was always respectful: when it was no, it was no. He never insisted […] I absolutely do not understand why he is here today,” lamented Corinne M., already separated from her husband, Thierry P., at the time of the events she is accused of.

Their relationship had been broken by the death of their son in a road accident, following which Thierry P. had sunk into alcoholism.

Samira T. has been looking for “answers to (her) questions for three and a half years” about her partner, Jérôme V., accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot six times in 2020. But she has not left him and she continues to “support him”: “if we met, it was not by chance, I had this mission.”

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“He wanted to look elsewhere”

“He had no reason to look elsewhere,” added, in tears, the woman who nevertheless accepted his requests for almost daily sexual relations, “at 10 p.m.,” for intimate photos or even walks naked.

Going so far as to overwhelm herself, Hien B. feels responsible for “having always refused” the advances of her husband, Jean-Luc L., at a time when she was looking after her sick mother: “I think that as a man he wanted to look elsewhere.”

Like her, Sonia R., who has been in a relationship with Patrice N. for 16 months, only wants to think about “the future”: “I support him and give him my complete trust. For me, there is a present and there will be an after, whatever the cost, whatever happens, whatever happens.”

“In cases of sexual violence, the relatives of the accused sometimes have difficulty imagining the violence themselves, because it is beyond their understanding,” explains Véronique Le Goaziou, associate researcher at the Mediterranean Sociology Laboratory and specialist in sexual violence: “And, in some cases, they do not give credence to the facts reported by the victims: they cannot or will not believe it.”

And to add: “Sexual violence does not only impact the perpetrators and their victims, […] it is entire families who suffer the consequences. […] As for (the partners), they are in a kind of shock.”

“I don't see him as a rapist at all. It's not him,” assured Lucie B., Grégory S.'s partner for seven years, with whom she is expecting a third child. “He told me that it was mainly a delusion of the husband and his wife. That she was drunk.”