Pelicot rape case
mass rape of Gisèle Pelicot in France
Over a period of nine years, from July 2011 to October 2020, Dominique Pelicot, a man from Mazan in south-eastern France, repeatedly drugged and raped his wife, Gisèle Pelicot, and invited male strangers through the internet to rape her while she was unconscious. Gisèle, who was unaware of the abuse perpetrated against her, was raped at least 92 times by 72 different men while her husband filmed and photographed the assaults. The crimes were discovered in September 2020 after Dominique was arrested for taking upskirt photographs of women in a supermarket; the ensuing police investigation uncovered hundreds of images on his computer equipment of men raping his wife.
The trial of Dominique and 50 other men accused of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault began in Avignon on 2 September 2024, and concluded on 16 December, with verdicts delivered on 19 December. All were convicted, with Dominique receiving the maximum 20-year prison term. Dominique was also found guilty of taking indecent images of his daughter and two daughters-in-law, and the rape of the wife of co-defendant Jean-Pierre Maréchal, who was charged with drugging and raping his own wife, and not Gisèle.
Gisèle's decision to waive her right to anonymity and insistence on a public trial attracted worldwide media attention and admiration. The trial drew attention to drug-facilitated sexual assault and issues around consent.
Background
Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot were both born in 1952. Gisèle Pelicot, née Guillou, was born in Villingen in what was then West Germany, where her father served in the French Armed Forces.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q119821735. Authority coordinates are 44.057, 5.128. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2011, 2020, 2024 and 1952.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pelicot rape case” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.