“I am a completely destroyed woman,” says Gisèle Pelicot.

Photo: Christophe Simon Agence France-Presse Gisèle Pelicot, leaving the court, Wednesday, in Avignon.

Agence France-Presse in Avignon

Published at 8:28

• Europe

“I am a completely destroyed woman,” declared Gisèle Pelicot on Wednesday, drugged by her ex-husband who then had her raped by dozens of strangers recruited on the Internet for a decade, in Mazan in the south of France.

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“I don't know how I'm going to rebuild myself, get over all this,” explained Gisèle Pelicot, 71, before the criminal court of Vaucluse, specifying that she wanted to lift the closed-door trial of the Mazan rapes so “that all the women who (are) victims of rape can say to themselves 'Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can do it.' I don't want them to feel ashamed anymore. Shame is not ours to have, it's theirs. […] I express above all my will and determination to change this society.”

Referring to her ex-husband with whom she says she was “a happy and fulfilled woman” during “50 years of living together”, Gisèle Pelicot says she “can't look at him”.

“I prepared myself for this trial but I still don't understand why. I'm trying to understand how this husband, who was the perfect man, could have ended up like this. How my life could have turned upside down. How you could have let these individuals into our home when you knew of my aversion to swinging. For me, this betrayal is immeasurable.”

Read also

• “I am a rapist,” admits Dominique Pelicot
• Saying she is “humiliated,” Gisèle Pelicot loses her temper at the Mazan rape trial
• At the Mazan rape trial, Pelicot's lawyer “alone against the world”

Dominique Pelicot, 71, admitted to drugging his wife Gisèle from 2011 to 2020, without her knowledge, in order to rape her and have her raped by dozens of men recruited on the Internet.

The 50 men tried with him, most of them for aggravated rape, and who like him risk up to 20 years in prison, claim to have believed they were participating in the fantasy of a swinger couple or not to have realized Gisèle Pelicot was unconscious.

The verdict of the trial, which has had international repercussions, is expected around December 20.