In a landmark trial that has shocked France, more than 50 men face charges of raping 72-year-old grandmother Gisèle Pelicot while she lay unconscious, drugged by her then-husband. Taking the stand Wednesday in Avignon, Pelicot faced her alleged attackers with remarkable resolve: “I express neither my anger nor my shame. I am expressing a desire to change society.”
The case has exposed disturbing gaps in French law and sparked nationwide protests demanding reform. Pelicot says she was “sacrificed on the altar of vice” by her ex-husband Dominique, who admitted to regularly drugging her food and inviting men to rape her while he filmed the attacks.
Pelicot described how Dominique, her ex, slipped drugs into her meals or in ice cream he would bring her after dinner, according to Sky News and The Telegraph. Dominique previously told the court he regularly crushed drugs in his wife’s food, including in her favorite dessert — raspberry ice cream. At the time, Gisèle thought him to be lovingly attentive to her.
“I used to say to him, ‘How lucky am I, you’re a darling, you really look after me,’” Gisèle told the court, according to the BBC.
Gisèle has chosen to have an open trial so that “all women who (are) victims of rape can say to themselves ‘Madame Pelicot did it, we can do it.’ I don’t want them to feel ashamed anymore,” she insisted on Wednesday, per French outlet Le Monde. “The shame isn’t ours to feel,” she added. “It’s theirs.”
“I’ve been told I’m brave. This isn’t being brave, it’s having the will and determination to change society,” she said. “Bravery means jumping into the sea to rescue someone. I just have will and determination,” she said.
“This is why I come here every day … Even if I hear unspeakable things, I am holding on because of all the men and women who are right behind me.”
While some defendants have acknowledged raping Ms. Pelicot, most claim they cannot be guilty because they didn’t realize she was unconscious. The Guardian’s profiles of the accused reveal disturbing details: one missed his daughter’s birth while allegedly assaulting Gisèle, while another admitted he “wasn’t interested” in unconscious women because he liked to hear women scream. He proceeded anyway, later apologizing in court.
The crimes have shaken the small community of Mazan. Of the more than 80 men videotaped raping Gisèle, only 50 have been identified. “I admit that when I’m at the post office or elsewhere, I say to myself, ‘Well, this guy, I wonder if he went to see Madame Pelicot,’” said Elizabeth Koenig, 72, who lives just blocks from the Pelicot’s former home. After attending the trial with her granddaughter, Koenig left “red as a poppy” with fury. “It’s a catastrophe,” she told The New York Times, adding that she imagined the horror of learning a family member was “harming my children or my grandchildren like that. It feels personal, this story.”
Inspiring change
Recently, some 500 people marched from Mazan to a nearby farm to show support for Gisèle, while thousands more have marched in other places around the country. There are protestors outside the courtroom every day, there to support Gisèle and demand change.Report ad
There is hope that the Pelicot case could lead to changes in culture and controversial French laws governing sexual consent.
The wife of one of the men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot told the court that because her mother had been ill she had not wanted sex with him over a long period of time and excused his behavior. “I think because I refused him all the time, as a man he had to look elsewhere,” reports The Guardian.
Gisèle told the court that rapists are not just “someone met in a car park late at night. A rapist can also be in the family, among our friends.” Her lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, told the court his client “could not help reacting.” He said, ”You thought that because you refused a sexual relationship since your mother was very ill and your mind was on other things, you had a role in what happened. For Gisèle Pelicot, it’s not because you refused a sexual relationship that it led to this happening.
“Because there is never an obligation to have sexual relations with your husband. Do you understand that? Gisèle Pelicot says you have no responsibility whatsoever in the fact that your husband decided to do what he did.”
French law desperately needs updating, say protesters and lawmakers alike. Until 1980, rape was narrowly defined by Napoleonic law as “illicit coitus with a woman who is known not to consent,” with most cases tried as misdemeanors, according to French radio broadcaster RFI. While the 1980 law redefined rape as “any act of sexual penetration committed on another person by violence, constraint or surprise,” it still doesn’t adequately address consent.
France finally established a legal age of sexual consent in 2021, following public outrage over an 11-year-old’s rape being tried as the lesser charge of sexual assault. According to a study by the Institute of Public Policies, just 14% of rape accusations lead to formal investigations. Legal expert Catherine Le Magueresse explains: “The law requires victims to fit the stereotype of a ‘good victim’ and a ‘true rape’: an unknown attacker, violence, and the victim’s resistance. But this represents only a minority of rapes.”
Justice Minister Didier Migaud and President Emmanuel Macron now support updating the law, particularly after France blocked a consent-based rape definition in a European directive last year. “I believe it is beyond understanding for our fellow citizens to refuse to include consent in the definition of rape,” Migaud recently told lawmakers.
The Pelicot trial, expected to conclude just before Christmas, could be the catalyst needed for change.
Originally published in the Deseret News
