How Gisèle Pelicot became the icon of a struggle

It is Thursday at 9:30 a.m. local time that the verdict in the trial of Dominique Pelicot – who risks 20 years of imprisonment – ​​and his 50 co-defendants should be delivered. Well beyond France, Gisèle Pelicot, the extreme embodiment of violence against women, commands admiration and, above all, rings the hour of the great awakening.

“Nothing caught my attention, nothing. I went to bed in my pajamas, I woke up in my pajamas. »

Gisèle Pelicot was spending peaceful days in Provence, with a “great guy”, until the gendarmes informed her, in November 2020, that the father of her three children, her husband of 50 years, had been raping her for 10 years under chemical sedation. That he also invited dozens of men to do the same — 72, the police estimate, but 51 will be accused.

The dark affair had an extraordinary impact. Several commentators saw it as a trial not just of ordinary men, but of masculinity.

More than 200 French intellectuals have even signed their name in the daily Liberation a text denouncing the domination of men, both within boys club than in the objectification of women’s bodies.

“The Pelicot affair proved it to us, male violence is not a matter of monsters, it is a matter of men, of ordinary people. »

Christelle Taraud, author of Femicides, a history of the worldalso notes that this violence “is part of a hierarchical social relationship from which men still benefit”.

What is certain is that Gisèle Pelicot has sounded the big wake-up call. “The shame is not ours to have, it’s theirs. »

It is in spite of herself that Gisèle Pelicot has become, at 72 years old, the icon of this fight against the society which she describes as “macho and patriarchal” and which “trivializes rape”, she denounces.

This trial, she decided, would take place openly, without closed doors, so that the world “sees what they [lui] have done.”

Every day, Gisèle Pelicot is acclaimed upon her arrival at the Avignon court. They give him flowers. At first discreet behind her signature smoked glasses, she has opened up over time and often even manages to smile.

“Often, in criminal stories,” his son Florian said during the trial, “we remember the name of the bad guy. But here, it is Gisèle Pelicot who we remember. »

“A torrent of tears”

Dominique Pelicot spared no member of his family. On his computer, the police found photos in a folder titled “My naked girl”. Photos of the spouses of his two sons, too. Taken without their knowledge, naked and pregnant, in one of the cases. The marriage of one of the sons will fall apart.

Dominique Pelicot is also suspected of five other unsolved crimes that occurred between 1994 and 2004.

From start to finish, will summarize M^e Antoine Camus, lawyer for Gisèle Pelicot, this whole story “is just a torrent of tears”.

A life punctuated by trials

Gisèle Pelicot had already experienced heavy trials. The daughter of a career soldier, she lost her mother to cancer at the age of 9. When she was 19, her brother also died prematurely.

That year, she met Dominique Pelicot, her first love, whom she married at 21. They raised their three children – two boys and a girl – in the Paris suburbs.

“It was the house of happiness,” will testify at the trial Pascale, a very close friend of Gisèle who attended the couple until the early 2000s.

Gisèle Pelicot, initially a shorthand typist, was hired at Electricité de France, where she rose through the ranks.

Her husband had multiple jobs, first as an electrician for a time in real estate… Nothing that lasted, so much so that he was experiencing financial difficulties, which he hid from his wife.

For family budget issues, they filed for divorce, while continuing to live together. They remarried in 2007.

On July 31, 2010, Dominique Pelicot was caught at the mall filming upskirts using a camera hidden in a pen. He pleaded guilty and paid a fine of 100 euros.

Three years later, once retired, the couple moved to Mazan, to a house bathed in the Provençal sun. The three children and seven grandchildren came to visit them regularly.

“Absences”, inexplicable sexually transmitted diseases

Health problems arrived. M^me Pelicot became more and more worried about his “absences”, fearing Alzheimer’s. She also caught four sexually transmitted diseases.

“For ten years, during my health problems, he accompanied me to the neurologist and gynecologists. How many times have I told him: “How lucky I am to have you by my side!” »

In addition, he insisted on always being in the kitchen, just to better hide the drugs to knock him out. « She told us: ‘I’m lucky, he prepares everything for me,’” one of her daughters-in-law, Céline Pelicot, recalled on the stand.

On September 12, 2020, the veneer cracked for good: around 3:30 p.m., Dominique Pelicot, then 67 years old, was caught by video surveillance, once again filming under the skirts of customers without their knowledge. He was handcuffed, arrested and his computer revealed the unthinkable.

The police counted 92 rapes against Gisèle Pelicot.

“I must admit that subduing a rebellious woman was my fantasy,” Dominique Pelicot admitted during the trial.

At one minute to midnight earlier this week, he apologized to his wife and addressed all of his family.

“I can tell all my family that I love them. »