Gisele Pelicot she became heroine and witness. Sedated and raped by her husband and dozens of other men, she chose a public trial. “This process helps women understand that the shame is not ours, it’s theirs,” she said in one of the first hearings. From the last one she left the Avignon court accompanied by an ovation. Her husband Dominique Pelicot and the 50 men he forced to rape his wife for a decade, drugging her and filming her went to trial.
The sentence will be a judicial conclusion, but the 72-year-old has already won, she is already a symbol. She reported what she suffered, she testified and she gave strength to women throughout France and around the world. Gisèle Pelicot’s will was immediately clear: she renounced anonymity so that her case could become exemplary. «Each of them could have stopped at any moment, but none had the courage to stop and report. Society must stop trivializing sexual violence against women». This woman has become a symbol cited in feminist demonstrations, marches and speeches. It represents the fight against male violence against women.
The rapes of Mazan
Mazan is the name of the place where the couple lived. The woman’s husband admitted to having drugged his wife from 2011 to 2020, without her knowledge, to rape her and have her raped by dozens of men found online. The fifty men on trial with him, most of them for aggravated rape, and who like him risk up to twenty years in prison, say they believed they were participating in the fantasy of a swinging couple or that they did not realize their state of unconsciousness where Gisèle Pelicot was. They are only some of the men who raped her, others have not been identified.
He secretly gave Gisele Pelicot cocktails of drugs and sleeping pills and then abused her. He documented what he did with videos and photos. The strangers who abused her were recruited on the online forum «Coco» and were filmed by a video camera. The woman’s husband was present and distributed the videos on an online porn platform. The man was arrested in September 2020 for secretly filming 3 women. Videos of the rapes were discovered on his hard drive.
The process
«I’m guilty of what I did, I ruined everything, I lost everything. I have to pay,” said Dominique Pelicot. Gisèle Pelicot attended all the hearings from September to December, she listened to her ex-husband impassively. «I don’t know how I will rebuild myself, how I will overcome all this. Fortunately I am supported by a psychiatrist. I know it will take me many more years. At almost 72 years old, I don’t know if life will be enough for me to get back up» added Pelicot, specifying that she wanted an open-door trial so that «all women victims of rape say to themselves: “Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can do it”».
«I don’t want them to be ashamed anymore. The shame isn’t ours, it’s theirs. (…) above all, I express my will and determination so that we can change this society,” said the woman victim of what is technically chemical subjugation.
The prosecution requested the maximum sentence for him, 20 years in prison. Against the other defendants, who are between 26 and 74 years old, on charges of aggravated rape, the requests vary between 10 and 18 years, for only one the prosecution requests 4 years for harassment of the victim. The penalties required will also vary based on the number of visits to the Pelicot home. About twenty men remain to be identified.
