Gisele Pelicot: How was Dominique Pelicot caught?

Dominique came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him upskirting - secretly filming up women’s skirts.

Police arrested him and searched his computer to see if he had saved images like this before - but what they found nightmarishly far outweighed their expectations.

They discovered a 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.

Although some of the accused – including Dominique Pelicot – acknowledged that they were guilty of rape, many did not, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings sparked wider debate in France about whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.

Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent covered his wife, too. Some sought to excuse their behaviour by insisting that they had not intended to rape anyone when they responded to the husband’s invitations to come to their home.

Dominique was found guilty of all charges against him, and imprisoned for 20 years, the maximum under French law. At 72, it could mean that he spends the rest of his life in prison.

Of the 50 accused of rape, just one was acquitted but was found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Another man was also found guilty on the sexual assault charge that he was tried for – meaning all 51 of the defendants were found guilty in one way or another.

Gisele Pelicot was sitting in the courtroom, facing the defendants as the verdicts were announced.