“I AM A rapist,” said a Frenchman accused of drugging his wife so that he and dozens of strangers could sexually assault her, his first testimony in a trial that has horrified France.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, used a cane as he slowly entered the courtroom in the southern city of Avignon, where his now ex-wife was present for the painful testimony.
“I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” Pelicot said, referring to the 50 other defendants in the mass trial — men he allegedly recruited online to rape his then-wife Gisele Pelicot.
“They all knew” that he was inviting them to rape her, he said.
But he added: “She did not deserve this.”
Dominique Pelicot is accused of administering anti-anxiety drugs to Gisele over a period of almost a decade, from 2011 to 2020.
He has been charged with raping her while she was unconscious, and recruiting dozens of other men he met online to …