“No one deserves more than her” the Nobel Peace Prize: a British woman has launched a petition so that Gisèle Pelicot receives the prestigious prize, a text signed by thousands of people on Thursday alone.
“It is difficult to imagine a form of violence that poses a greater challenge to peace than sexual violence,” writes author Catherine Mayer to introduce this petition.
She launched it in English on the Change.org website on December 20, the day after the end of the trial with worldwide repercussions of the ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot and his 50 co-defendants. The petition appeared on Wednesday in French on the site.
It was signed by more than 32,000 people in each of the two languages.
“No one deserves the Nobel Peace Prize more than Gisèle Pelicot,” said Catherine Mayer in the petition. “It’s time to make sure the Nobel committee and the few people authorized to nominate take action.”
Catherine Mayer was the co-founder of the Women’s Equality party (WE), which campaigned for greater equality between the sexes before it disbanded last year.
She was a journalist and is also the author of several books, including a biography of Charles, then Prince of Wales, in 2015 (“Charles: the heart of a king”).
-Gisèle Pelicot “managed to break through the fog of disinformation by renouncing anonymity to attend the trial of her attackers and testify,” writes Catherine Mayer.
Gisèle Pelicot has become an icon because of her courage in the face of her rapists.
She was sedated with anxiolytics by her husband and raped in her sleep for ten years by him and dozens of men he invited.
By refusing to hold the debates behind closed doors, this septuagenarian brought the Mazan rape affair into the list of major trials in the history of feminism.
The court sentenced Gisèle Pelicot’s ex-husband to the maximum sentence, i.e. 20 years of criminal imprisonment, and declared all of his co-defendants guilty. Among the latter, several appealed their convictions.
