Gisèle Pelicot's ex-husband has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging her, raping her, and recruiting more than 50 men to abuse her.

A French court sentenced Dominique Pelicot to 20 years in prison. He was found guilty of drugging and raping his ex-wife, Gisèle Pelicot, and recruiting more than 50 men to abuse her over a decade. The ex-husband received the maximum sentence under French law after being convicted of aggravated rape and other crimes. In this historic trial, all defendants were found guilty, most of them of aggravated rape.

This is what the five-judge panel ruled:

Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison for aggravated rape and the production and distribution of images of Gisèle Pelicot, and the production and distribution of sexual images of her eldest daughter, Caroline, and her sons' wives. He will not be eligible for parole until he has served two-thirds of his sentence.

The other 50 defendants received sentences ranging from 3 to 15 years, less than what prosecutors requested. Of them:

• 46 were found guilty of rape.

• Two were found guilty of attempted rape.

• Two were found guilty of sexual assault.

The other sentences

The rest of the convicted have received sentences ranging from three to 15 years in prison. After Pelicot, the highest sentence went to Romain Vandevelde, 63, a pensioner who visited the Pelicot home six times and knew he was HIV-positive. He will serve 15 years.

Jean Pierre Marechal, whom Dominique Pelicot convinced to follow in his footsteps and also drug and rape his own wife, was sentenced to 12 years in prison. The prosecution had sought 17 years for him.

Hassan O., 30, the only defendant who fled, was tried in absentia and sentenced to 12 years in prison. The lowest sentence, three years with two suspended, went to Joseph Cocco, 69, who was found guilty of groping, not rape.

The judge in charge of the case also found Dominique Pelicot guilty not only of aggravated rape but also of taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law, Aurore and Celine, and of raping Jean Pierre Marechal's wife.

Durante casi una década, Gisèle Pelicot fue drogada por su exmarido Dominique, que reconoció haberla violado y haber invitado a decenas de hombres que había reclutado por Internet a mantener relaciones sexuales con ella en la cama de su casa, mientras ella estaba inconsciente. Fue ella quien decidió renunciar al anonimato y sacar a la luz este juicio, haciendo, según sus palabras, que "la vergüenza cambie de bando", de la víctima al violador. Aunque Dominique Pelicot admitió los cargos que se le imputan, la mayoría de los demás hombres juzgados niegan que lo que hicieron fuera una violación.

The other convicts, aged between 27 and 74, come from all walks of life, and most come from within a 50-kilometer radius of Mazan, the Pelicots' village. The fact that they are firefighters, security guards, and truck drivers has earned them the nickname Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr. Anyone). Although most had argued that, since they had their husbands' consent, they believed it was a sexual game with a libertine couple—and therefore not rape—the court dismissed these arguments. The convicted men had 10 days to appeal the ruling against them.

From 2011 to 2020, Dominique Pelicot gave his wife tranquilizers and sleeping pills without her knowledge, crushed them, and added them to her food and drinks, causing her to experience memory loss and fainting. Her now ex-husband was only discovered when a security guard reported him to the police for taking pictures up women's skirts in a supermarket. Until then, she was unaware of the horrors her husband was committing. "I thought we were a close couple," she once told the court. Instead, Dominique Pelicot logged into a well-known, now-banned website called Coco.fr to invite local men to her home to have sex with her while she was in a coma. "I was sacrificed on the altar of vice," Gisèle Pelicot declared at the beginning of the trial.

Gisèle, 72, has become a symbol in France for the courage she has shown throughout the trial, appearing in the courtroom almost every day, first shielded behind her sunglasses and later taking them off, proving that she had nothing to be ashamed of.