Trial of Giselle rapes Pelate: The women of her rapists support their husbands

Fifty men are on trial with Dominique Peliko for his ex-wife, Giselle in . Men simple, everyday, devoted family heads and fathers, retired. Despite heavy accusations against them, their women decided to support them and stand by them. The defensive line followed by most of the defendants in the much-fledged rape trial in France is that they were “managed” by Giselle’s husband, i.e. they did not know that the victim was under the influence of sleeping pills while raped and believed to be some kind of sexual game of the couple. It is not easy to hear that your husband or father is a rapist. You thought you knew him, you lived with him all these years, and then one day you learn that the man you loved was raping a drugged woman without her having the slightest idea. “Why not believe him, why should we believe everyone else and not him? We believe his version, because we know he is not a rapist, we have no doubt” said Valérie, wife, and Erica, the daughter of one of the 50 men who are on trial with Dominique Pelico for Giselle’s rapes. In the corridors of the Avignon court, the mother appears more strained but the daughter is dynamic and angry. “We think about it all the time, all the time… It’s hard, but we don’t abandon him, we’re sure he’s not a rapist. Otherwise we wouldn’t be here,” he says. “He’s not a rapist” At the age of 54, Cyril D. went to the Peliko house in the peaceful village of Mazan on 2 September 2019 to meet a couple who consent to have sex with others, as he had told researchers. Valérie took a four-day vacation with her daughter. During this time, her partner was filmed by Dominique Pelico while sexually abusive Giselle who was drugged. When the police came to interrogate him on February 9, 2021, he admitted that he had realized that something was wrong, but he did not stop. Before Vaucluse criminal court on Friday, September 20, he again denied any intention of rape. “I am 54 years old and it is true that I passed the consensus piece,” he admitted. “Women do not belong to men and at this point I blame myself,” he added, recognizing that Dominique Pelico had told him that he would give his wife pills “to relax”” Photo source: REUTERS/Manon Cruz For Valérie’s wife, the world was “poor” on February 9, 2021. That day, he was at work when Cyril D. was arrested at 6 a.m. at their house. Two hours later, she was informed of the arrest and went to the police station along with her daughter. “I was told that my husband is charged with rape. I understood about theft. I said “no, that’s not possible, you’ve got the wrong person”. They showed me pictures of my husband and I recognized him immediately,” he says with a shaking voice. Police offered to take a sample of her hair, to check that nothing similar had happened to her, i.e. she had been drugged by the same procedure that Dominique Pelico did to his wife. “I knew very well that it was not true, it couldn’t be, it couldn’t be,” says the 50-year-old woman. “He begged my mom not to leave him” “The first thing we wanted to do was see Dad,” Erica’s daughter, 20, continues. “We immediately made all the procedures for the visit. The family took three weeks for the first. In visiting hours, “his first words were for my mother. He told us “it is not true, it is not that” continues the young woman. The man described as “large” by his family, has lost 15 kg. “He told us he knew immediately why he was arrested, because he had seen the media (as Mazan’s rape case had gotten public) otherwise he would not know”. Cyril D. then wanted to know if his family was on his side. “He said ‘ Don’t leave me, stay with me ‘”, his daughter remembers. “She told him it wasn’t the most important but the most important thing was to get out of jail”. Valérie came to have no doubt about her partner as their meetings in the visiting room progressed. “He never pushed me, always respected me,” insists the defendant’s wife. Plus, he says they were very close, spent all their time together. Cyril D’s suicide attempt two weeks after his imprisonment convinced them of his innocence even more. “It was because of his guilt towards Giselle Peliko”, he wants his daughter to believe. “He had guilt because he didn’t know what he did to her, he didn’t want to do this to her”. “Wifes, sons and daughters are not responsible for anything, they suffer too” Valérie and her daughter were not the only ones who came forward to support their loved ones in the trial that began on 2 September 2024. Outside the courtroom, another woman expressed her faith in her husband’s innocence. “It doesn’t matter what the penalty will be, he’s our father, we need him,” said the son of another defendant on the stand. Crépin-Dehaene defends two defendants who were married before the events and who she describes as “unbelieveable victims” and states that they have much anger for Dominique Pelico for the trap that set them up. “The husbands, sons and daughters are not responsible for anything. They suffer too,” he insists. “We tried to figure out how our father got to this point,” Erica confirms. “We do not deny that he should have realized (that Giselle Pelico was drugged). He then argues that everything was perfectly designed and that it fell into a trap. Mother and daughter sympathized with Giselle Peliko. “They looked at us with half an eye in Mazan. A lot of people asked me why I didn’t throw him out. But no, I didn’t want him to end up on the street without anything. He didn’t deserve that.” Today, Valérie has separated herself from her partner. Although he feeds on him “great love”, charges and stays in psychiatric hospitals, all of this was too big to bear. Mother and daughter do not seek acquittal, but a proper sentence. “Don’t generalize. Let the monsters be punished,” they say. For psychiatrist Christine Barois, these women’s reactions can be explained. “There is denial because you have to be able to think of the unthinkable, you have to think about emotional dependence but also economic dependence (of their husband),” he explains.