Mazan rape trial: the Pelicot children confront their father in poignant testimony

On Monday November 18, at the Vaucluse criminal court, Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot’s three children – David, Florian and Caroline – took the stand for the first time in the Mazan rape trial. In front of an emotional audience, the sons directly questioned their father, demanding explanations for the grey areas surrounding his actions, while the pain of the revelations was palpable.

Why did you do it? David Pelicot’s anger
David, the eldest sibling, was the first to speak out. In a speech blending childhood memories and scathing reproaches, he described the duality of his father, whom he described alternately as an attentive educator and a man whose actions were incomprehensible.

“This man passed on to me values, a backbone, and we shared common passions, like sport and cinema. But today, I can’t call him anything other than ‘that man’.”

However, the tone changes when he discusses the sordid discoveries: pornographic montages involving his own wife, found on Dominique Pelicot’s computer.

“But how could you do such a thing?” he rages, before returning to suspicious snapshots of his sister Caroline, taken without her consent. “If you still have any humanity left, tell the truth about what you did to my sister, who suffers every day from these actions.”

David also confronted his father about suspicions of assault concerning one of his grandchildren, evoking disturbing exchanges around an alleged “doctor’s game”. Dominique Pelicot, visibly cornered, denied any act of incest, shouting: “Nothing! On any child or grandchild!”

Florian Pelicot: “You were the devil himself”
Florian, the youngest member of the family, took his turn to speak, adopting a tone both charged with emotion and defiance. While acknowledging his gratitude to his mother, he expressed deep incomprehension at his father’s actions:
“Why did you do this? Why did you ‘lend’ our mother like that?”

Florian spoke of disturbing behaviors he had observed even before the revelations. When he used the family computer to print out documents, he sensed that his father was uncomfortable. One detail in particular struck him: a file, although apparently empty, bore the evocative name “culotte Martine”. These clues didn’t make sense at the time, but resonate today as indirect evidence of a double life.

Florian also expressed a deeper doubt: that he was not Dominique Pelicot’s biological son. His mother assured him that her infidelity occurred after he was born, but he now wishes to remove any doubt through a paternity test:

“It would be a relief not to be her son. I want to know, to turn the page.”

Answers still awaited
The trial continues in a climate fraught with questions and expectations of the truth. Dominique Pelicot, who has categorically denied the accusations, was not immediately allowed to respond to the testimony. He is expected to speak one last time on Tuesday, before the closing arguments and closing arguments of the civil parties.

The testimonies of David and Florian Pelicot illustrated the weight of family trauma and the quest for answers that, for them, remains unfinished.