The ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot has been found guilty of aggravated rape.
Dominique Pelicot is the now ex-husband of 72-year-old grandmother Gisèle who admitted that for years, he knocked his wife of 50 years out with drugs so he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.
Dominque is also found guilty of the attempted aggravated rape of the wife of one of the co-accused, and taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law, BBC News reports.
He’s now been sentenced to 20 years behind bars.
At the time of writing, several other defendants have been found guilty for the respective charges they were facing as well.
The youngest person to have been found guilty is Charly Arbo, who is just 30 years old.
A panel of five judges in France delivered the verdicts today (December 19) for the dozens men charged with aggravated rape and sexual assault on Gisèle in a historic case that has shaken France – and the rest of the world.
The ordeal inflicted over nearly a decade on Gisèle in what she thought was a loving marriage, and her courage during the trial – which ran over three months – has transformed the retired power company worker into a feminist hero of the nation.
Stretching over more than three months, the trial galvanised campaigners against sexual violence and spurred calls for tougher measures to stamp out rape culture.
Gisèle only learned about the years of abuse she’s been subjected to after her then-husband was caught taking photos of women’s crotches in a supermarket in late 2020, prompting police to search his phone and other devices.
Police subsequently found his library of homemade images documenting years of abuse inflicted on his wife — more than 20,000 photos and videos in all, stored on computer drives and catalogued in folders marked ‘abuse’, ‘her rapists’, ‘night alone’, and other titles.
The abundance of evidence led police to the other defendants. In the videos, investigators counted 72 different abusers but were not able to identify them all.
In total, it’s thought that over 80 men may have raped Gisèle.
If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org
