The French husband who drugged his wife to be raped by more than 70 other men took the stand to confess Tuesday, admitting, “I am a rapist like all the others in this room.”
Dominique Pelicot, 71, admitted to filming men raping his wife of 50 years Gisele, 72, for nearly a decade while she was drugged unconscious — and begged for his family’s forgiveness.
“I admit to the charges in their entirety,” Pelicot said, according to BFM TV, whose reporter was in the courthouse.
“I am a rapist just like all the others in this room,” he said, admitting that he had also raped his wife along with the men he recruited to abuse her while she was unconscious.
“I ask my wife, my children, my grandchildren to accept my apologies. I regret what I did. I ask for your forgiveness, even if it is not forgivable,” he continued.
He faces charges including rape, gang rape and various privacy breaches by recording and disseminating sexual images.
Pelicot addressed the 50 other men between the ages of 26 and 73 who are also on trial for raping his wife.
“They knew everything. They can’t say otherwise,” he said.
The wheelchair-bound sicko blamed his twisted behavior on a difficult childhood and was a victim of rape himself, complaining, “One is not born a pervert, one becomes a pervert.”
His former wife responded to his confession, telling the court, “For 50 years, I lived with a man who I would never have imagined was capable of these acts of rape.”
Pelicot, who was initially arrested in 2020 when he was caught filming up a woman’s skirt, offered sex with his wife on a website and filmed the abuse.
Investigators later found 300 photographs and videos of the abuse, including images of his own daughter naked, according to prosecutors.
Pelicot faces up to 20 years in prison.
With Post wires.
