Pelicot ‘follower’ gets 15 years in France for drug rapes

Police stand outside the Bank of America building in Paris, Saturday, March 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)

A French court on Friday sentenced a man to 15 years in jail for drugging and raping his partner and filming the acts, for which he sought advice from notorious convicted rapist Dominique Pelicot.

The 39-year-old former bodyguard was found guilty of all charges, a decision justified by verbal violence in the repeated and long videos he filmed, the court said, stripping him of parental rights over his son he had with his partner, a 40-year-old shopkeeper.

The Lyon court’s president Dominique Thevenet, said the defendant’s “traits of perversity” had greatly “disturbed” her.

The man, who has not been named in order to protect his victim, was impassive hearing the verdict.

His partner wept in her father’s arms before smiling a few moments later.

“This is definitively a page turning for a woman,” her lawyer Julia Studient, told AFP.

Public prosecutor Michel Guedes had earlier described the man as “sexual deviant” who displayed “Machiavellian behaviour”.

The events spanned from 2015 to June 13, 2023, the day the accused was arrested.

On his phone, investigators found online conversations in which he shared stolen images of his partner undressed.

The investigation targeting him dates back to the arrest in September 2020 of Dominique Pelicot, who was sentenced in 2024 to 20 years in prison for raping and handing over his wife, Gisele, to dozens of strangers for sex after he drugged her.

In an online conversation found after his arrest, Dominique Pelicot provides advice to the accused, casting himself, in the words of the public prosecutor, “an experienced guru to this new follower.”

The former bodybuilder replied: “I follow you to the letter”.

In court, the man said: “I don’t recognize myself.. I ask your forgiveness, from Vero (a pseudonym), from my children, from her family. I had everything, I destroyed everything.”