French woman's 'world fell apart' when told of rapes by men invited by her husband

A French woman whose husband has admitted to drugging her and inviting more than 80 men to rape her over the course of a decade has said she "was sacrificed on the altar of vice" and treated "like a rag doll".

- Angelique Chrisafis

Gisèle Pélicot, 72, said: "Police saved my life" when they investigated her husband Dominique Pélicot's computer in November 2020, after a security guard caught him filming up the skirts of women in a supermarket near their home in a village in southern France.

Police said they found a file labelled "abuses" on a USB drive connected to his computer that contained 20,000 images and films of his wife being raped almost 100 times.

Recounting the moment in November 2020 when police first showed her images of a decade of sexual abuse orchestrated by her husband, Pélicot, who had been drugged to the point of unconsciousness, told the court: "My world fell apart. For me, everything was falling apart. Everything I had built up over 50 years." She said she had barely recognised herself in the images uncovered by police, saying she was motionless.

"I was sacrificed on the altar of vice.

They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.

"When you see that woman drugged, mistreated, a dead person on a bed of course the body is not cold, it's warm, but it's as if I'm dead." She told the court rape was not a strong enough word, it was torture.

She told a panel of five judges that she had only found the courage to watch the footage in May this year.

"Frankly, these are scenes of horror for me," she said.