Dominique Pélicot finally gives his explanation for the rapes of his wife

The main accused in the so-called Mazan rape trial, Dominique Pélicot spoke for the last re times this Tuesday. The opportunity to “show humanity”, as he was told asked by his children the day before, giving explanations as to the motive for his crime.

For the 48th day of hearing, the main accused in the Mazan rape case was invited to speak one last time before the debates are definitively closed. If Dominique Pélicot had a word for his children, confident that he had been able to "measure the damage of annihilation, and […] regret[r] it bitterly", while this trial was  the first time he had seen David, Caroline and Florian for four years and the start of the case, the one who is accused of having drugged and orchestrated the rape of his wife by men recruited on the Internet for a decade has assured that he has “never touched [his] children or [his] grandchildren”. During this trial, there was indeed a question of photos of his daughter found in his things or even of a proposal, made to one of his grandsons, to “play doctor”.

But this Tuesday, November 19, Dominique Pélicot mainly tried to provide the court and his relatives with the beginnings of an explanation. How could a father and husband described as irreproachable have committed such acts ? Part of the explanation could be found in his past, he said. Dominique Pélicot thus revealed having himself been raped as a child. A nurse allegedly abused him while he was a hospital patient. “When I was 9, I didn't realize what it was,” he said, his voice trembling.

“It was my fantasy, selfish, without making her suffer”

After that, he claims to have also been forced, at the age of 14, to participate in a rape while he was working on a construction site. “When they put your head in a woman's sex like that and they make you watch a woman being raped by four people, one in her mouth and one in her vagina…,” he explained, as reported by Le Figaro, continuing: “Of course, “that doesn't excuse” But if I managed to do what I did with people who voluntarily accepted, it's perhaps because of “that.”

“”That created a crack,” he also noted, reports BFMTV. And Dominique Pélicot added: “I think that this crack that I kept […] is close to that, to what I experienced at 14. The fantasy that I have indelicately revived is close to that.”

Before the court, the defendant confided that he had known “two gods” : his mother and his ex-wife, Gisèle Pèlicot. While it was often alluded to during the trial that he considered his wife a “saint”, Dominique Pèlicot explained: “I was talking about a saint because she was always equal to herself, benevolent.” So why did you drug her and make her suffer rapes by strangers ? “If I came to do what I did through people who voluntarily accepted what I proposed, it was to subdue an unruly woman,” he said, affirming: “It was my fantasy, selfish, without making her suffer. Take my mobile as you want, but that's how it is.”