“We are good people”: in Mazan, the small town whose name has become so heavy to bear

Published on December 14, 2024 at 08:00. / Modified on December 14, 2024 at 9:03 p.m.

13 mins. reading

“When I meet people far from here, I now tell them that I come from Provence. I no longer mention Mazan. It’s not that I’m ashamed of my city, quite the contrary, but I can’t stand it anymore that people only talk to me about this affair.” Most of the Mazanese people we met at the end of November shared this reflex that Jean-François Clapaud, opposition municipal councilor, describes to us. Others, in the minority, affirmed that they said, even more willingly than before, that they lived in this small town in Vaucluse “to open up the conversation”.

The atrocities suffered in Mazan by Gisèle Pelicot, drugged by her husband who raped her and invited dozens of other men in the region to do the same, are at the origin of an extraordinary trial which will remain one of the most highlights of the year in France. The global impact of the debates provoked by the banality of the profiles of the accused, and the lessons to be drawn from them on the widespread diffusion of toxic masculinity in society, led to the accreditation of 138 media outlets, including 57 foreign ones.

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