Drugged and raped for years, Gisèle Pelicot has turned the trial over the violence she suffered into a j'accuse “against a machist and patriarchal society that trivialises rape”.
"Dominique P.". For a few days, when the chilling story of a French couple in the southern department of Vaucluse had just come to light, the names of those involved had been kept hidden. Before long, however, the case became public knowledge. Not only the atrocious details, but the battle that arose from it: for truth, for justice, for all women who are victims of violence. And above all against trivialisation. A j'accuse against that cultural degradation from which we have still not managed to free ourselves.
Dominique P. turned out to be Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle's husband. A man who had repeatedly drugged her with preparations based on powerful anxiolytics, in order to have her raped by dozens of people. For ten years — the events took place between 2011 and 2020, primarily in the commune of Mazan — the man recruited strangers online for this purpose. Seventy-two people in total who committed around two hundred sexual assaults. About fifty of them ended up in the dock at a trial that opened on 2 September at the Avignon court and concluded today, 19 December.
The verdict: twenty years' imprisonment for Mr Pelicot, the maximum sentence. And guilty verdicts for all the other defendants (even though the sentences will be handed down at a later stage). A drop of relief for a family "totally destroyed", as the couple's three children declared (one of them a daughter, who fears she may have suffered the same fate as her mother, although no evidence has been found to support this).
But the trial represents only the judicial stage, however crucial, of the ordeal lived by Gisèle Pelicot. The case, in France and beyond, generated enormous media coverage. The incredible number of people involved, and above all the arguments put forward by some of them to demonstrate their alleged innocence, made it clearer than ever how backward and shamefully superficial our society remains on the issue of violence against women.
What is also striking is the fact that, until a few years ago, Gisèle Pelicot was completely unaware of what was happening to her. Unable to remember, and therefore to react. On the afternoon of 12 September 2020, Dominique Pelicot, who was 67 at the time, was caught by security staff at a supermarket in Carpentras filming under customers' skirts. The police were called and arrested him.
An investigation was opened and the computer equipment in the man's possession was examined. It emerged that he had been communicating online with people through a dating site. The men he "recruited" were also sent footage of previous rapes to persuade them. It was 2 November of the same year: Gisèle's husband, to whom she had been married for nearly 50 years, was then placed in pre-trial detention by police and shortly afterwards began to confess to the monstrous reality he had conceived and carried out. Only at that moment did the woman and her children learn everything.
When the trial opened, four years later, Gisèle had already become the face of a cause: one aimed, to use her own words spoken during a hearing, at "a change in the way society looks at rape". Because beyond her own ordeal, "this trial is about a machist and patriarchal society that trivialises sexual assault".
It is for this reason that she refused to have the trial held behind closed doors (something she would have been entitled to request). And this, despite the court having warned her that the repugnant footage would "necessarily be viewed" in the courtroom. For Gisèle, the trial had already become something more: "Shame must change sides", one of her lawyers had explained. Her children agreed, and so the proceedings were opened to the public and the press. A heroic gesture.
On 5 September, during her first deposition, the victim recalled how the police commissioner prepared her in 2020 before telling her the truth: "I am about to show you things that will not be pleasant," he said. "That was when my world collapsed. Everything came crashing down. I saw unbearable scenes, with men dealing with a limp, anaesthetised woman. Insupportable." But what matters most, according to Gisèle, is bearing witness so that other women are forewarned: "The day one of them wakes up unable to remember what she did the night before, she may think of my testimony. I am not telling this story for myself, but for all those who may suffer the same treatment."
Her words were picked up by newspapers around the world. Translated, repeated, shared everywhere. As were those of the defendants who tried to defend themselves, thereby exposing the subculture by which they are steeped: "We had the husband's permission", they explained to the judges who asked whether, during those brutal acts, it had ever occurred to them that the woman's consent was necessary. "The husband's permission": as though that were enough, as though the wife were his property. The banality of evil.
"Since the beginning of this trial," Gisèle said during the proceedings, "I have listened to many things that should never have needed to be heard. I have watched individuals parade before the court denying that they raped. I find all this banality deeply distressing. I want to say to these men: at what point did Madame Pelicot give you permission to do it? At what point did you become aware, faced with that inert body? Few of them admitted their guilt. For me, this is a trial of cowardice."
To punish this abomination, the prosecution requested a combined total of approximately 600 years' imprisonment. But the most precise summary of everything is the one published this morning by the newspaper L'Humanité: across Gisèle's face, on the front page, runs the simple phrase "Merci Madame". "Thank you, Madame." On behalf of everyone.
