The China Mail - Dominique Pelicot: the 'monster' whose facade crumbled

Dominique Pelicot, who had already confessed to the crimes, was sentenced to the maximum term of 20 years in jail by the court in the southern city of Avignon on Thursday after an over three-month trial that shocked France and devastated a family.

His now ex-wife Gisele Pelicot once told investigators her husband of 50 years was a "super guy", a facade that crumbled when police seized his computer by chance after he was caught filming up women's skirts in a local supermarket.

Authorities discovered videos and photos meticulously documenting the abuse of Gisele Pelicot between 2011 and 2020, mostly at their home in France's southern Provence region.

He recruited dozens of men -- including 49 co-defendants, all found guilty on Thursday -- to sexually abuse his heavily sedated wife over a decade.

The 72-year-old, who admitted he is a "rapist", insists his childhood trauma led him to become the man who orchestrated the sexual abuse of his wife by dozens of strangers.

"You're not born that way. You become that way," he told the court.

- 'Side A, Side B' -

During the trial, experts sought to illuminate the inner workings of the retiree who, up until the discovery of the abuse in 2020, had been viewed as a devoted family man.

"There's a side A and a side B," he told the court, drawing a comparison with the eponymous character in the Gothic horror classic "Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

After a lacklustre school career, Pelicot struggled to find his professional footing, moving from the nuclear sector to real estate, where he had only moderate success.

He married Gisele Pelicot in 1973, with whom he had three children: David, Caroline, and Florian, a marriage his ex-wife described as happy.

Pelicot borrowed money from people close to him, including his children, without reimbursing them -- even draining his daughter's bank account, where she had saved the money earned from her summer jobs.

He and Gisele Pelicot divorced for five years to protect her from his financial woes, but even so, Domique Pelicot was seen as a loving father and grandfather.

The two shared a home in the small village of Mazan, where he enjoyed cycling, painting, and drawing.

But lurking behind that veneer was a man "who inspired fear", said psychologist Marianne Douteau.

- 'Split psyche' -

During the trial, Pelicot's defence lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro dug into his chaotic upbringing -- which he claims included sexual abuse -- and described a shaky mental state to explain the "perversity" behind his crimes.

Born near Paris in 1952, Pelicot contended with a "dysfunctional family environment," said one psychiatric expert, where he experienced "psychological, physical and sexual abuse".

As a child, he lived in a rehabilitation centre for prisoners for a few years while his parents worked as guards. He said he was first sexually assaulted at age nine when a male nurse at a hospital forced him to perform oral sex.

That rape could have caused "a split in his psyche", said psychologist Annabelle Montagne, who described him as a "self-centred" man who tended to "consider other people as objects to manipulate, to lie to".

He allegedly wrote to his family a decade ago about this assault and a second incident during which a young woman sexually abused him when he was a teenager working on a building site.

Pelicot's brother refuted this during the trial, which provoked one of the defendant's rare angry outbursts during the proceedings.

The 72-year-old insisted that both sides -- the doting father and the manipulative "monster" described by his co-defendants are "the same man".

For his daughter, he is the "worst sexual criminal of the last 20 years".

At the end of the trial, Pelicot asked his family to accept his apology.

"I regret what I did, making (my family) suffer... I ask them for forgiveness," he said.

Dominique Pelicot will not be eligible for parole until he has served two-thirds of his sentence.

B.Carter--ThChM