One of 49 men accused of abusing a French woman at the invitation of her
husband has described realising that she was unconscious but insisted that
he had not intentionally raped her.

Lionel Rodriguez, a supermarket employee, was the first of the accused to
testify at the mass rape trial in Avignon over his association with
Dominique Pelicot, who sedated his wife, Gis�le, and offered her to men he
had recruited on a swingers� website.

Pelicot has admitted all the offences, committed over a decade, and said
that the other men were all willing accomplices.

Mrs Pelicot has waived her right to anonymity to publicise the prevalence
in France of �chemical submission� � rape by men who drug women, often
their wives. Her determination and international publicity has helped make
the trial a likely turning point in the country�s approach to domestic
sexual violence.

Pelicot offered Rodriguez, 44, �something a little out of the ordinary�
and told him that his wife liked having sex with other men while sedated.

�There was talk of medical drugs. Sometimes of her taking them, and
sometimes of him administering them to her. It wasn�t very clear. I think
I convinced myself that it was a sex game � I didn�t ask myself too many
questions,� Rodriguez said.

First, Pelicot had sent Rodriguez photographs of his wife in the garden,
naked and appearing awake. Then, in December 2018, Pelicot invited him to
the couple�s home in the small Proven�al town of Mazan, after bringing Mrs
Pelicot to his supermarket for �inspection�, Rodriguez told the court.

He was ushered into the bedroom and, on the �insistent� instructions of
the husband, had sex with the inert Mrs Pelicot for 30 minutes. When Mrs
Pelicot began to move, �he told me to leave the room, and that�s when I
realised that something was wrong�, Rodriguez said.

�I never imagined that she might not be part of this game � My greatest
error was not to ensure that she was conscious and consenting.�

He agreed that he had committed rape. �Since I never obtained Mrs
Pelicot�s consent, I have no choice but to accept the facts,� he told the
court.

However, he claimed that he had no intention of rape. �When I got in my
car that day, I didn�t say to myself, �I�m going to rape this woman.��

� �These men are degenerates�: French rape victim attacks defence case

The same argument � that Pelicot tricked the men into their acts � is
being deployed by 35 of the accused.

A second defendant, Jacques Cubeau, 72, a retired fireman and lorry
driver, gave the court a similar account of being duped into believing the
Pelicots were swingers after he made contact with the husband online.

None of the men has denied an encounter with Mrs Pelicot, because police
had identified them from video recordings, messages and phone calls in
records meticulously kept by Pelicot. A further 20 men have not yet been
traced.

Cubeau told the court that he had only caressed Mrs Pelicot when she was
presented to him on the couple�s bed in 2020 and had never raped her. He
had been disturbed by the scene of the sleeping woman, he said.

�Mr Pelicot asked me to leave the bedroom, which was a relief, and I told
him I was not in the right place. He threw a pair of panties at me and
said, �Here�s a souvenir.��

Cubeau said that he thought about reporting the scene to the police but
never did. The investigating judge reported that a video showed Cubeau
performing oral sex on Mr Pelicot before leaving.

Both men said they bitterly regretted their actions, which had destroyed
their lives. Cubeau said that he blamed patriarchal attitudes that gave
older French men the idea that they �owned� their wives.

Mrs Pelicot, whose divorce from her husband was finalised three weeks ago,
reprimanded defence lawyers on Wednesday when they pushed her to admit
that she had posed for the erotic pictures that her husband sent to his
contacts. �Aren�t you a little bit of an exhibitionist?� one asked her.
She denied that she had co-operated in the pictures and accused the
lawyers of trying to blame her.

At the opening of the trial on September 2, Chief Superintendent J�r�mie
Bosse-Plati�re, head of the investigation, said that the hundreds of hours
of video viewed by police showed without doubt that �the perpetrators
could not have believed that Gis�le Pelicot was conscious�.

The men, including a 51st defendant accused of inviting Pelicot to rape
his own drugged wife, all face up to 20 years in prison.

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/pelicot-france-rape-trial-
case-27rt03jqn