#and every last one of their dicks rots off over a slow and agonizing several months

[bilboyagathechickenfootedhobbit]

Oh, but they were lonely! Poor men, not having any healthy relationships to rely on come the holidays. I mean, I know when *I* have felt lonely in my life, my first thought was ABSOLUTELY to go rape a drugged and unconscious woman three times my age to feel better about my inability to maintain any semblance of a healthy relationship with literally anyone. Gosh, I simply cannot IMAGINE why all these rapists are so lonely and disconnected….could it possibly have anything to do with them being the disgusting type of monster that thinks raping a woman in her own bed at the direction of her husband while she is CLEARLY UNCONSCIOUS is a perfectly acceptable thing to do??? Nah….its probably because women are so mean. Definitely not that other thing.

A young vineyard worker accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six occasions over four years when she had been drugged by her husband also proposed drugging and raping his own mother, a court has heard.

Charly A, 30, is one of 51 men on trial over the rape of Gisèle Pelicot, whose then husband, Dominique Pelicot, crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and invited dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020 in the village of Mazan in Provence. Dominique Pelicot has admitted the charges, telling the court: “I am a rapist.”

Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a former logistics manager, has become a feminist hero after insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and the other men be held in public to raise awareness of the use of drugs and sedation to rape women, having said: “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.”

Charly A, a vineyard worker who later packed lorries for a cement company, is accused of driving to the Pelicots’ home on six occasions between 2016 and 2020 to rape Gisèle Pelicot in her bedroom alongside Dominique Pelicot, who had drugged her into a comatose state.

On the first occasion, Charly A was aged 22 and Gisèle Pelicot was aged 64. Charly A and Dominique Pelicot are also accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot in her bed on the night of her 66th birthday.

Charly A denied rape, saying: “I never had the intention to rape.” He said Dominique Pelicot, whom he had met online, had invited him to the couple’s home and told him that Gisèle Pelicot would be “pretending to be asleep”. He said: “I was told it was a scenario in which she was asleep. In that scenario, she was consenting. For me, I didn’t intend to rape. I didn’t want to rape her, I didn’t want to do something bad to that family.”

Charly A had spent part of his childhood in Mazan and lived a 30-minute drive away.

Video evidence showed a whispered conversation in Gisèle Pelicot’s bedroom between the two men, in which they discuss a plan to drug and rape Charly A’s mother in the same way. In the footage, Charly A says he will give an address and date for this to take place. Both men told the court this conversation took place, but said they did not rape Charly A’s mother.

Charly A’s mother, a personal care assistant and mother of three, had lived in Mazan and in different parts of the Vaucluse area of southern France.

Charly A was asked in court why he had suggested he and Dominique Pelicot rape his mother. He said he was afraid of Dominique Pelicot, who had asked him if there was another woman in his family or entourage who he would like to rape or see raped.

Charly A said he suggested his own mother “because it was the only woman who came to mind”. He said Dominique Pelicot was “insistent”, so he gave him a photo of his mother. Charly A told the court he had never intended to go through with it and kept making excuses. He said: “I gave the excuse that my little brother was home and my mother had to look after him, so he couldn’t come. Because I wasn’t OK with it.”

Dominique Pelicot gave Charly A three sedative tablets wrapped in silver foil in order for him to sedate his mother, explaining that he should crush them into her food. Charly A told the court that he threw the pills out of his car window that night and never used them. Dominique Pelicot contradicted this, saying that Charly A had instead returned the drugs to him.

Asked in court if he was angry with his mother or hated her, Charly A said he was not. He told the court: “I love my mum as any son loves their mum, nothing special.”

Police testing on a hair sample from Charly A’s mother showed a very low presence of sedatives consistent with a sporadic or single use of sedatives. She told police she had never used that type of medication. “I don’t know how it could be in my body. I don’t understand,” she said.

A court psychiatrist who interviewed Charly A said his “very intense use of pornography” from his early teenage years – including what the psychiatrist called pornographic cliches about mothers and older women – had played a role in his objectification of women.

The psychiatrist said the fact that Charly A regularly went to the Pelicots’ home in December, around Christmas time and in January, could have been related to his depression at having a dysfunctional family, affected by divorce and separation, around the holiday period.

Other accused men have said they were lonely at Christmas. One 63-year-old who is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot but denied it, said he was “lonely” as “Christmas was approaching and I was going to be on my own again”. Another man, 37, who is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot one New Year’s Eve and also denies it, said he “had nothing else to do” because his brothers hadn’t invited him to their New Year’s party.

The trial in Avignon continues until 20 December.

[sohotthateveryonedied]

Talk Less, Smile More

Read here on AO3!

Summary:

Tim wakes up, a silent cry scraping up his throat.

He grapples for his neck, wheezing panicked gasps as he feels for the thick blood that should be painting his skin, the gash carved through his trachea. Instead, he finds the ridge of a scar and the soft collar of the shirt he wore to bed.

Cold gravel presses against Tim’s back, digging in through the kevlar padding as he lies on the rooftop. There isn’t much to see; there so rarely is when you live in a city ranked the seventh most polluted in the United States. There are so few stars above, but each twinkles its heart out as if they’re laughing at Tim’s misfortune down below. They watch him bleed out and titter as it happens. Time moves in little eternities bookended by larger ones, pockets of time that make no sense because, by all reason, Tim should have been dead hours ago. It certainly feels like he’s been here that long. Maybe this is just how it goes when you die. Your heart slows, beat by beat, and with it slows consciousness. Your thoughts become a dripping faucet, never quite knowing when to stop until fate says “fuck it” and twists off the handle. Tim is dying. He knows that for certain. What other option is there when you can’t breathe and are bleeding out faster than anyone can run to save you? Miraculously, there is no pain as Tim slowly chokes on his own blood; only the agonizing push and pull of lungs struggling for air they can’t reach. Tim is going to die here, all by himself on this damn bloodied rooftop. Who knows how long it will be until someone finds the body, if the rats don’t chew him down to the bone first. Maybe it’ll be a janitor. Maybe a suicide jumper will stumble upon Tim’s mangled corpse and be convinced not to do the deed, if only to spare themselves the humiliation of rotting alone on icy gravel.

Tears slip over Tim’s temples and catch in his bloodied hair. Will his family wonder what happened to him, or will they simply forget to check if their brother and son is still alive? How long will it take for them to realize that Tim hasn’t checked in? Days? Weeks? Ever? I did it for you, he would tell them if he had breath. All of you. For Bruce. I just wanted to bring our family back together. He just wanted to bring Bruce back. Instead he went and got himself killed. Tim can’t see how severe the damage is, but he knows it’s too deep to fix. It’s too deep to breathe, but Tim tries anyway because lungs are one of those things that refuses to give up, even when the rest of your body knows it’s a wasted effort. Tim gasps for air he can’t have, choking as blood spurts from the wound, spilling down his throat and pooling on his collarbone. He hovers on that precipice between life and death—a fish on a beach, a sailor between plank and shark-infested waters. He’s so sure of it that for a moment, he’s convinced that he hallucinates the shape swinging overhead. It’s his personal angel of death, come to collect. Then he blinks back the fog of self-grief, the misty tears clouding his vision. Because he would recognize Dick Grayson anywhere, batsuit or not. Tim opens his mouth and strains to make a noise, to scream, anything. But some invisible force holds him down and keeps his limbs from working. All he needs is one noise, and maybe this doesn’t have to be the end. Or if it does, then at least he’ll have his big brother to hold him as he goes. Dick, he mouths. Help me. But all that comes out are whooshes of air, grating against his mutilated throat and severed vocal cords. Tim is suffocating to death and help is so close, but so far away. Dick can’t hear him. No one will ever hear him again. Please, Dick, Tim silently wheezes as the shape gets farther and farther away. I’m scared. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to be alone anymore. The scene gets blurry as his eyelids droop without his consent, Dick’s image still prominent against the blackness, like he’s determined to tease Tim with rescue just out of reach. Tim’s chest jerks as he strains for air, his vision darkening at the edges, taking him away… Tim wakes up, a silent cry scraping up his throat. He grapples for his neck, wheezing panicked gasps as he feels for the thick blood that should be painting his skin, the gash carved through his trachea. Instead, he finds the ridge of a scar and the soft collar of the shirt he wore to bed. Tim releases a shaky breath. He’s drenched in sweat, sticky and making him shiver despite the sheets tangled around his legs. Trembling fingers touch his cheek and find salty wetness there, the remnants of tears he shed in his sleep. It’s fine, he tells himself. It was just a dream. A memory. You’re okay now. He hasn’t been okay in months. The only sound to be heard in the dark bedroom is Tim’s own harsh breathing. He runs a hand through his hair, scrubs away the tears. God. He should be past this by now, right? And yet he can’t escape the lingering image of nightmare and memory blurred together, combining to create a worse monster in his head. Before he knows what he’s doing, Tim is reaching for his cell phone and punching in the numbers, trying to pretend like there aren’t glass shards pushing their way through his lungs. Three rings. A click. “Tim?” Dick sounds exhausted, his voice thick with sleep. “It’s three in the morning.” Oh. Tim didn’t even think to check the time. Now he feels kind of bad for waking Dick up when the guy already gets so little sleep as it is. “What’s up?” It hasn’t occurred to Tim until now that he can’t exactly talk over the phone anymore. He keeps forgetting that part, keeps answering calls only to feel a rock settle in his stomach when he remembers that he can’t even say hello. He let instinct carry him tonight, drive him to do what he does every time he has a nightmare: call Dick. He hears the shifting of a mattress. “Did you have a nightmare?” Tim doesn’t say anything—can’t say anything, but there’s a sigh on the other end as Dick must take the shuddering breaths for what they are. Even voiceless, Dick knows him so well. “What can I do?” Good question. Swallowing thickly, Tim lowers his phone to the nightstand and knocks on the wood. Morse code. Talk. “Okay,” Dick says. Tim can almost hear the cogs in his brain clicking as he thinks. “Uh...want to hear about the last time Donna and I went out drinking?” He doesn’t wait for an answer and starts talking, rambles on about gay bars and something called a Long Island iced tea. Tim lies back down and puts Dick on speakerphone, letting his voice fill the room. Slowly, as Dick rambles, Tim’s heart begins to settle. His hands stop shaking, little by little. Breathing gets easier, less like he’s sucking in air through a pixie stick. He doesn’t know how he’ll ever get used to this, to the never-ending silence. Tim was comfortable being the quiet Robin compared to his predecessors, because at least then it was a conscious choice to adopt the same silent, brooding demeanor as his mentor. Just as often as he came in with a quip and a joke, Tim thought. He listened. He got good at the silence, at hearing what others missed and catching cues between words. Tim had a reason for his own silence, just as he had the power to drop the schtick in a second and go back to being Tim Drake. But now? Now the choice to be quiet has been made for him. And that is a fate worse than he ever could have bargained for.