A man on trial in France for drugging his wife and inviting dozens of men to r@pe her over a decade told a criminal psychologist that his wife was to blame for his actions because she wouldn’t go swinging with him.

Dominique Pelicot, 71, was excused from sitting through the hearing today, September 9, after his lawyer told the trial judge that he had suffered “medical problems” over the past 48 hours for which he had not received “adequate treatment”.

But psychologist Annabelle Montagne told the court in Avignon this morning that she interviewed the retired electrician in December 2020, a month and a half after he was taken into custody, where he admitted to carrying out the campaign of abuse of his wife Gisele.

The psychologist recounted: “Pelicot said, ‘My wife and I had a discussion about swinging but she didn’t agree so I drugged her’.”

Montagne said Pelicot maintained he loved his wife, but she added: “He sees his partner as an object to satisfy his sexual and narcissistic needs. His wife is then a partial object and no longer an object of total love.”

It comes as another prison psychologist this morning told the court that Pelicot had a “split personality”, lacked empathy and inherited the temper of his father, who was said to be a violent abuser.

She also revealed Pelicot maintains the sickening abuse of his wife would have continued if he had not been arrested and complained that his life had been ruined by the criminal charges brought against him.

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The disturbing revelations into Pelicot’s mind were revealed before his two sons, David and Florian, took to the stand to give evidence against their father.

Psychologist Marianne Douteau this morning told the court how her client lamented his arrest, complaining that the case against him had ruined his life and that he and his wife could have continued in a happy marriage had his misdeeds not been discovered.

Douteau said: “(Pelicot) complains that this criminal case against him has destroyed his life.

“He claims everything could have continued as before if he had been arrested. He said: ‘Gisele would not have known anything, we would have continued to be happy”.”

Madame Douteau subsequently told the court of several major events in Pelicot’s upbringing, explaining that he revealed in a lengthy February 2021 interview with her that he was raped by a hospital nurse when he was aged just nine years old.

Meanwhile, Pelicot’s father Denis was said to be a vicious wife-beater who sent his son out to work from the age of 14 and took 80 per cent of his wages. His parents also took in a young girl, whom Denis is said to have abused.

The psychologist concluded that Pelicot had inherited a personality like that of his father – angry, stubborn and impulsive.

She said: “Dominique Pelicot comes from a troubled family in which young children were abused.

“[Pelicot] has a two-sided personality; he is a patriarch but he is also irresponsible and manipulative. Behind closed doors he does not respect limits.

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“He has a split personality between the person he wants to be and the person he is.”

“He does not show any empathy – but he is not inauthentic [in his expressions of love for his wife],” she concluded.

The psychologist also explained how Pelicot admitted he was very sexually demanding and routinely sought out sex on the internet.

He told her: “I went on the internet every day, I was constantly on sites offering wife-swaps.”

The psychologist told how Madame Pelicot was cut off from her support network in Paris after the couple moved to the south of France in 2013 for their retirement, at which point Dominique Pelicot ramped up his heinous campaign of abuse until his eventual arrest in 2020.

Pelicot fell in love with Gisele, whom he considered “a saint,” when they were 18-year-olds and they married just two years later, setting up a home in the Paris region.

They both recall having a happy marriage, although she had an affair with a work colleague about 14 years after tying the knot while he also engaged in extramarital adventures.

Pelicot trained as an electrician and worked for French energy giant EDF, but in the early 2000s decided to retrain and start a new career as an entrepreneur in real estate.

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He divorced his wife in 2004 in what he described as a “strategic move” to shield her from huge debts he built up in a failed business venture to become an estate agent, with the couple forced to borrow cash from various different sources.

Despite their monetary issues, the couple remarried in 2007 to huge fanfare, with Gisele’s stable income from her position as a manager in a Paris-based company meaning they were ultimately able to make ends meet.

But the picture of an idyllic marriage painted by Dominique Pelicot was torn down by his brother along with his sons David and Florian, who described their dad as an angry liar who could not stand to be contradicted and flew off the handle when he was confronted with his failings.

The case, heard in the town of Avignon in France’s Provence, has appalled anyone who has listened to how former electrical engineer Dominique Pelicot abused his wife over a decade.

Madame Pelicot, 72, last week faced down the 51 men – including her husband – who have been accused of raping her, all of whom were stuffed into the Vaucluse Criminal Court each day as proceedings continued.

In a three-hour testimony last week, the grandmother-of-seven described the moment she learned from police officers how she was drugged unconscious and then raped by strangers as she laid motionless on the marital bed, while her husband watched on, recording the abuse on camera for his own personal pleasure.

She told the court: “I was subjected on the altar of vice. It’s a dead woman on a bed. This isn’t a bedroom, it’s an operating theatre. They treat me like a garbage bag, a rag doll. These aren’t sex scenes, these are rape scenes, it unbearable.”

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In her evidence, the couple’s only daughter Caroline Peyronnet told the court last week how her world fell apart when her mother called her to inform her of his crimes. Her agony was compounded when detectives discovered Mr Pelicot had also taken photographs of Caroline lying motionless on a bed in her mother’s underwear.

Caroline Peyronnet, 45, described her father as “one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 years.”

The trial has heard that Pelicot’s perversion was only discovered after he was arrested for taking photos up women’s skirts at a supermarket near the couple’s home in the pretty village of Mazan, in the shadow of Mont Ventoux in September 2020.

A police search of his computer discovered 20,000 homemade films and photographs of men he met on the internet raping his wife dating back to 2011.

Detectives traced 50 of some 84 men that Pelicot had met on a now-defunct website and invited to his home to carry out the abuse.

They discovered that Pelicot routinely put powerful sedatives in his wife’s drink and food to render her unconscious for when her abusers arrived at the family home under cover of darkness.

Pelicot urged the men to sneak into the house and undress in the kitchen to leave no trace. Then, he turned on the camera and filmed as each man abused his wife, before meticulously filing and cataloguing the home moves under various skin-crawling titles.

The men, all from the Provence area of the south of France, are aged between 26 and 73 and include a fireman, a nurse, a civil servant, a plumber, a soldier and a journalist.

Detective traced 50 of these men and together with Pelicot, charged them all with r@pe.

About 16 of the accused, including Pelicot, have admitted the offence. But 35 maintain they are innocent, with one man telling police he believed Gisele Pelicot had consented as her husband was present.

Pelicot faces up to 20 years in jail. The other men face shorter sentences if found guilty.

The trial is set to last until December.