A Mazan on Saturday, the harsh and resilient words of women victims of violence resonated in the Provençal countryside during a march in support of Gisèle Pélicot which transformed into a collective exercise in freeing speech.
“We take off our glasses girls, we are not here to hide,” says a demonstrator, outside this small town in Vaucluse where for years, in her marital home, Gisèle Pélicot was drugged and raped by her husband. husband and dozens of strangers. Facts for which her now ex-husband and 50 other men have been on trial since September 2 and until mid-December in Avignon.
Here the vineyards at the foot of Mont Ventoux offer a unique setting for this walk which brought together some 500 people. Among them, many women of a certain age, a few dozen men, many holding a white flower. All framed by a handful of horses.
Victims who speak
At 69, Catherine Borel is experiencing her first “demonstration”. “This trial is terrible, hard, but this woman has tremendous courage to have succeeded in rebuilding herself. It will allow progress. I was a victim of things thirty years ago, and there was nothing we could do about it,” she says calmly. “They didn’t believe me” and “I found myself with my two kids flying out the window”.
At the head of the procession, Laetitia removes her glasses, looks at the AFPTV camera and admits that she is going to speak for the first time here. “There are a lot of people in my family who didn’t know what happened to me. There had been miscarriages, but they didn’t know why,” she says with a smile that swallows her tears.
These women leading the march have all been victims of violence and are learning to rebuild themselves via equine therapy, within the Isofaculté association, at the initiative of this event. “When we ride our horse, we are high, we feel valued.” But “the most important thing is to learn to live without pain”: before, “if I didn’t create harm for myself, I didn’t feel alive,” continues Laetitia.
On this extraordinary trial known as “the Mazan rapes”, everyone has their own opinion, their own feelings. “This is not the trial of all men but of certain men,” slips Josiane Dolce, who did not go to court, fearing her reaction to the videos now publicly broadcast at the hearing. She also fears a form of “voyeurism”.
A subject still taboo
Francis, 73, who does not wish to give his last name and lives in the neighboring village, expects severity because “it is absolutely necessary that all this never happens again”. He regrets that here it is “a taboo subject”: “I had the opportunity to talk about it with a friend, he told me that it did not interest him. I was shocked, I decided not to speak to him again for at least 15 days.”
For Angelina Leroux, 39, municipal councilor in Mazan, it is “super important to show Madame Pélicot that we support her” and that “we do not agree” with the comments of some. A reference to the statements of the mayor who had estimated that “after all, no one had died” in this case, before apologizing.
Arriving at the Mazan stables after an hour of walking on a small road, the demonstrators placed their flowers at the foot of a wooden heart on which was written “Love, empathy, living better together”. A lady dressed in candy pink holds up a drawing of the face of Gisèle Pelicot who has become famous, with the statement “shame changes sides”.
At the microphone, the president of the Isofaculté association, Daniel Silvestre, explains that many of the women they follow did not have the courage to come. But those who are there recognize that “it feels good to talk”. “I’m experiencing beautiful things at the moment, I’m no longer afraid, I stand up straight, I no longer look at my feet and I even wear colored shoes,” confides one of them.
