ParisThroughout the judicial process they have almost always been in the background. With the trial approaching its final phase, this Monday the three children of the rape victim, Gisèle Pelicot, and the main accused, Dominique Pelicot, testified in a very tense session in which they faced their father So far only his daughter, Caroline – whom the accused photographed sleeping in her underwear – had spoken at the trial. The other two sons, David and Florian Pelicot, aged 50 and 38, have recounted the shock it caused them all to learn that their father had been drugging their mother for years so that hundreds of strangers would rape her while she was unconscious Some facts that have broken the family and that have meant a very hard psychological blow for all of them, as they have reported.
“Since November 2, 2020, our life as a family has been destroyed. We have experienced a great tsunami,” said David Pelicot, the eldest brother. That day, November 2, his mother told them everything that had happened. “I had to go to the bathroom to throw up,” he recalled. Afterwards, Gisèle Pelicot and her three children decided to make everything that had to do with Dominique Pelicot disappear from the family home: “We emptied the house in two days. Everything that belonged to that man had to disappear. No more we have no family album.”
tell the truth
After asking the judges to make their decisions “commensurate” with their suffering and “the horrors and atrocities” the defendants have committed, David Pelicot addressed his father directly. In an angry tone, he has asked her to tell the truth about the doubts that after weeks of trial have not yet been resolved, such as whether she also drugged and abused her sister – Caroline – or her son, the grandson of the accused “If you still have some humanity, if you listen to me, tell the truth about what you have done to my son and my sister,” he asked. “I haven’t done anything to them,” replied the main defendant in the process.
The youngest son, Florian, has also asked his father to confess about the abuse to his sister. Photos seen during the trial show Caroline Pelicot lying in bed, either asleep or unconscious, in her underwear. The family suspects that he also drugged and sexually abused her, something that could not be confirmed during the trial. “I am the forgotten one in this trial,” said Caroline Pelicot, who has publicly accused her father of abusing her as he did with her mother.
paternity test
Florian Pelicot has accused his father of being “the devil” and has explained that all of this has cost him a divorce from his wife. The police also found photographs that Dominique Pelicot had taken of Florian and David’s partners. The younger brother has assured that paternity tests will be done to verify that the accused is his father. At some point near his birth, his mother had an extramarital affair. “I need to take the test, put an end to the doubts. It is not easy to be the son of Dominique Pelicot”, he concluded.
