In the international press, the town of Mazan was only mentioned a few weeks ago by one occurrence. That of the marriage of British actress Keira Knightley to musician James Righton, which took place in this small town in the south of France in 2013. Since the start last week of the trial of Dominique Pelicot, accused of having drugged, raped and had his wife Gisèle raped there for nearly a decade by at least fifty men, the name Mazan has continued to resonate in international newspapers. The BBC has sent reporters there to interview women from the town, British tabloids have photographed the couple’s former home from every angle, and the New York Times devotes an entire file to “France faces the horror of a rape case.”
Everything in this case is likely to fascinate the media. Starting with the facts brought to trial: how could a sixty-year-old man have sedated his wife for ten years, and after four decades of marriage, to rape her and offer her up as fodder to dozens of strangers? “It all seems almost too shocking to take in – the length of time Dominique Pelicot is accused of drugging his wife, the ordinary, loving appearance of the retired couple and the number of men accused of raping her,” writes the special envoy of New York Times in his first hearing report.
At the Avignon court, the foreign media discovered an admirable woman in the dock, whom most did not hesitate to describe as“heroin”. “Although the [Washington] Post does not usually name victims of sex crimes, in this case she asked to be identified by her married name, Gisèle Pelicot. The alleged victim, 72, asked that the trial be held in open court because she wanted the world to know what happened to her,” indicates the other major American daily.
“Shame must change sides”
The opening of the trial to the media is noted by all the newspapers. “This decision is a form of activism – she hesitated at first, then was convinced by her daughter – to clearly designate those who should feel dishonored. ‘Shame must change sides…’, her lawyer said, a phrase that has become a banner in this case.”writes in particular the Paris correspondent ofThe Country.
Photos of Gisèle Pelicot open all the articles. Her long bob, her sunglasses, her face offered to the journalists’ cameras. The one she accuses is an omnipresent but invisible shadow. Dominique Pelicot has not yet testified and only those who attend the trial know his face, protected by French law which prohibits photos of the accused, as several newspapers explain. We only know him through his statements to the police and his meticulous methods of having his wife repeatedly raped by strangers. However, the international newspapers all warn: it would be far too easy to describe this retiree as “monster”.
To attach this adjective to alleged rapists is to participate in their “defense mechanism”, estimates the German weekly The mirror. “It would be far more worrying to have to admit that rapists are all embedded in a continuing social fabric of normalized misogyny,” writes her journalist Samira El Ouassil. Like many others, she notes that the defendants are “a sample of society, and not just French society.”
The columnist ofThe Country Manuel Jabois also invites us to consider the horrible banality at the start of the affair: a husband who rapes his wife. «[A cause de ses pertes de mémoire]Gisèle Pelicot thought she had the beginnings of Alzheimer’s disease or a brain tumor. But it was something more sinister: a husband she was in love with,” he wrote.
