The persecuted Pelicot family is divided among the people

At the heart of this heartbreaking family drama is Gisèle Pelicot, an emaciated 71-year-old woman, drugged by her ex-husband and harassed for a decade by strangers she recruited online.

Watching him enter the court in Avignon and giving evidence, it was shocking to think of the extent of the abuse his body suffered.

But since other members of his family have taken up the matter, it has become painfully clear that no one has come out unscathed from the storm that has been stirred up by the action of the Congress.

The damage done to this family is obvious. One by one, they described the destructive force that engulfed them in November 2020 as a “tsunami” that left nothing but devastation.

Dominique Pelicot was finally caught after a security guard caught him filming under women’s skirts.

But it took weeks for the police to discover the full truth that eventually tore his family apart.

Warning: This story contains information that some readers may find disturbing

For years, he drugged his wife and recruited men online to rape her while she was unconscious.

He recorded the abuse and carefully classified each visit into folders on his hard drive. I face the evidence, Dominique Pelicot pleaded guilty to the charges of rape.

Alongside the abusive language describing her videos, she added captions with men’s names. Another 50 men were charged with him and a few admitted to rape. More than 20 others could not be identified and are still at large.

Gisèle Pelicot was present for almost all of this research. She kept her name anonymous and allowed the public to see what she endured.

The videos leave no doubt that the sexual acts were not consensual. Mrs. Pelicot is seen lying in bed, snoring, as her husband whispers instructions to various men to touch her, drive her, use her.

Artificial sleep protects his mind to some extent, but his body becomes an object.

In his words, he was treated “like a rabbit doll, like a bag of garbage”.

“I’m 72 now and I don’t know how much time I have left,” he told the court last week.

The magnitude of the betrayal and crime of Dominique Pelicot is so great that the aftershocks have exploded more than his ex-wife.

Pelicot’s child, Caroline Darian, now 45 years old, screamed at her father in court as she demanded to know the truth about the images found on his computer. Titled “My naked daughter”, the photos show her naked and she says she is clearly drugged.

Mr Pelicot has given various and sometimes conflicting explanations for the images, although he denies abusing his daughter. “I never touched you,” he pleaded.

But his duality has been exposed more and more during the trial, and he has apparently lost the right to be believed by his daughter.

“You’re lying,” he shouted back. “I am sick of your lies, you are alone in your lies, you will die lying.”

Fighting back tears, he blamed his father for looking at him “with eyes related to relatives”.

Caroline Darian told the court she felt she was the “forgotten victim” of the case as, unlike her mother’s case, there was no record of the abuse she believed he inflicted on her.

He founded a charity to highlight the dangers of drug addiction and published a book in 2022 detailing his family’s trauma. In it, he revealed that there is a disagreement between his mother who found out that he brought a lot of warm clothes to his father in prison, weeks after his crimes were revealed.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Caroline wrote. “He was still looking for a person who was raped for ten years.”

That disagreement was exploited by an opposition lawyer who suggested that Gisèle Pelicot chose her ex-husband over her daughter by not wanting the truth about Caroline’s photos. Gisèle shook her head, but Caroline smiled slightly, seeming to agree with the lawyer’s explanation.

When Caroline’s brothers David and Florian took action they repeatedly referred to the pain she was going through, encouraging their father to tell the truth.

Crying, Florian, 38, who is the youngest in the family, turned to Dominique Pelicot sitting in the glass box to his left and said: “If you have dignity and humanity – you have nothing left to lose – say it. The truth is Caroline.”

He also talked about his long-held suspicions that he was born from his mother in the 1980s, which was compounded by the feeling that his father loved his siblings more than him.

Desperate for answers, she wondered if she might be the “reason” for her father’s crimes. He said he would seek a paternity test, adding that it would be a “relief” not to be Dominique Pelicot’s son.

Through tears, Florian painted a bleak picture of what his life had become. His marriage to the mother of his three children, Aurore, did not survive the revelation that Dominique Pelicot also took pictures of him.

Despite their split, the soft-spoken woman often attends the trial and said she has revealed the “law” of abuse.

Aurore, who also survived the sleep of relatives, must live with the regret of not obeying her instincts regarding Mr. Pelicot. “If he had, he might have been able to change the way things happened,” said his lawyer.

The eldest of the Pelicot children, Davide, is a large 50-year-old man who looks remarkably like his father.

Standing this week, he explained how he became close to Dominique Pelicot when he became a father.

Then, his voice growing sad and holding on to the stand as if to strengthen himself, he remembered the sad details of the night his mother told him about his father’s arrest. “We all know where we were when the tsunami hit,” he said.

Nude photos of his wife Celine, pregnant with their twin daughters, were also found in Mr Pelicot’s files. He was in the bathroom, and he filmed it on a hidden camera.

His voice heavy with emotion, David explained looking at his mother, weak and lost, standing at the train station, her life has become like her dog and a suitcase.

Remembering the birthday parties his parents used to throw for him and his siblings, envying their friends, he said: “My childhood has disappeared; it was erased.”

The trauma that exists in this family seems to be endless. David’s son, now 18, wonders what really happened when Dominique asked him to “play doctor” as a child.

His younger siblings, the family’s lawyer said Wednesday, “will have to find their place in a family where their grandmother, mother, brother and aunt are all victims of their grandfather.”

Caroline’s young son is still reeling from the carefully scripted revelation, four years ago, that his beloved grandfather injured his grandmother.

“This is just an example of the depth of suffering caused by rape in the family,” said lawyer Stéphane Babonneau in his closing arguments.

A decision is expected to be issued on December 20. Mr Pelicot faces 20 years in prison – the maximum sentence for rape in France.

And for his whole family the trauma will continue. Because none of them will ever know for sure what they may or may not have done.

In one of the shaky cell phone videos shown in court, a tall, naked man stands in the middle of a dark bedroom. Another man is sitting on the bed, smiling, next to an unconscious woman lying on her side, snoring softly.

Behind him, in the chest of drawers, is a picture, clearly visible despite the low light.

The Pelicot family, frolicking near the beach on a hot day, and beaming at the camera.