Avignon, 19 December. (askanews) – The Gisèle Pelicot trial lasted over four months at the Avignon court, against her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot and 50 men who forced him to rape his wife for a decade, drugging her and filming her. Thanks to the courage of the victim who wanted an open trial, renouncing her privacy, the case caused a real earthquake in the conscience in France. Gisèle Pelicot, an unknown pensioner, used to a quiet life, has become a symbol of the fight against violence against women, overturning the common narrative in which those who have often suffered abuse often hide. “We don’t have to feel the shame – it was Gisèle Pelicot’s manifesto throughout the trial – they are the ones who have to feel it”.
“I said everything I could” explained Gisèle after her last testimony, supported by her two sons and daughter, “even with the pressure of all these gentlemen behind me, and I understood that with the questions they were trying to make me contradict myself”.
“She has demonstrated a dignity, a courage that commands respect, I am very proud of her”, said her daughter Caroline Darian, who also wrote a testimony book, “I stopped calling you dad”.
“I have a former friend among the defendants” Isabelle Mounier, a public employee, said during the trial. “I came to see what happens. What do I feel? Disgust. And for Gisèle, I put myself in her place, I empathize deeply. She was strong, very strong.”
During the 4 months of the trial, the women who demonstrated outside the Avignon court asked for “20 years for everyone” and not just for Dominique Pelicot. Because at the heart of the case there is a society that is still unable to absorb the concept of consent: the husband, who asked for forgiveness in the courtroom, is not the only monster, whether neighbors, colleagues, people recruited on the internet, they took advantage of the woman without asking a question, without reporting. Fifty identified people were in the courtroom, but over seventy can be seen in the Pelicot videos. Many of those men say they didn’t understand, that for years they believed their husbands that it was an erotic game, and the victim was pretending to be asleep.
For Sadjia Djimli, nurse, Gisèle Pelicot “has now become a protagonist of women’s struggle. This story resonates, but it should make everyone feel involved, men as well as women”.
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