General News
Meropi Kyriacou Honored as TNH Educator of the Year
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
AVIGNON, France (AP) — A woman who was allegedly drugged by her now ex-husband so that she could be raped while unconscious by other men testified Thursday that her world collapsed when police uncovered the years of alleged abuse.
Speaking in a calm and clear voice, Gisèle Pélicot detailed to the court in the southern French city of Avignon the horror of discovering that her former spouse systematically filmed the suspected rapes by dozens of men — storing thousands of images that police investigators later found.
“It’s unbearable,” she testified. “I have so much to say that I don’t always know where to start.”
Dominique Pélicot, now 71, and 50 other men are standing trial on charges of aggravated rape and face up to 20 years in prison. The trial started on Monday and is expected to run until December. Thursday marked the first time that Gisèle Pélicot had testified.
The Associated Press doesn’t generally identify victims of sexual crimes. But Gisèle Pélicot’s lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said she accepted that her name be published in the same way that she insisted that the trial be held in public.
She told the court that she hopes her testimony might help spare other women from similar ordeals. She said she pushed for the trial in open court in solidarity with other women who go unrecognized as victims of sexual crimes.
She and her husband of 50 years had three children. When they retired, the couple moved into a house in a small town in Provence, before her world was torn apart in late 2020.
“I thought we were a close couple,” she told the court.
But a security agent caught her husband taking photos of women’s crotches in a supermarket, leading investigators to search Dominique Pélicot’s phone and computer. They found thousands of photographs and videos of men appearing to rape Gisèle in their home while she appears to be unconscious.
Shocked, she left her husband after police showed her some of the images.
“For me, everything collapses,” she testified. “These are scenes of barbarity, of rape.”
She left with two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together.” Since then, she said, “I no longer have an identity. … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself.”
Police investigators found communications Dominique Pélicot allegedly sent on a messaging website commonly used by criminals, in which he invited men to sexually abuse his wife. The website has been shut down.
Crude details of the alleged abuses, which investigators said began in 2011, and of the elaborate system Pélicot put into place over 10 years have emerged during the trial.
During questioning earlier, Dominique Pélicot told investigators that men invited to the couple’s home had to follow certain rules — they could not talk loudly, had to remove their clothes in the kitchen, could not wear perfume nor smell of tobacco.
They sometimes had to wait up to an hour and a half on a nearby parking lot for the drug to take full effect and render Gisèle Pélicot unconscious.
“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” she testified. “They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.”
Because Dominique Pélicot videotaped the alleged rapes, police were able to track down — over a period of two years — a majority of the 72 suspects they were seeking.
Besides Pélicot, 50 other men, aged 22 to 70, are standing trial. Several defendants are denying some of the accusations against them, alleging they were manipulated by Pélicot.
Over the next few months, the defendants will appear in small groups before a panel of five judges, with Pélicot scheduled to speak next week. Psychologists, psychiatrists and computer experts will also testify.
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By LEWIS JOLY and NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY Associated Press
Vaux-Montagny reported from Lyon, France
NEW YORK – Meropi Kyriacou, the new Principal of The Cathedral School in Manhattan, was honored as The National Herald’s Educator of the Year.
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli airstrike on a hospital courtyard in the Gaza Strip early Monday killed at least four people and triggered a fire that swept through a tent camp for people displaced by the war, leaving more than two dozen with severe burns, according to Palestinian medics.
WASHINGTON (AP) — With characteristic bravado, Donald Trump has vowed that if voters return him to the White House, “inflation will vanish completely.
MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian man was rescued in the stormy Sea of Okhotsk after surviving for more than two months in a tiny inflatable boat that lost its engine, but his brother and nephew have died, officials said Tuesday.
MANCHESTER, England (AP) — Manchester United great Alex Ferguson will step down from his role as club ambassador at the end of the season, a person with knowledge of the decision told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California and Nevada voters will decide in November whether to ban forced prison labor by removing language from their state constitutions rooted in the legacy of chattel slavery.