#france mass rape trial

[mizelaneus]

“The majority of the defendants deny raping Ms Pelicot, and argue that they cannot be guilty because they did not realise she was unconscious and therefore did not "know" they were raping her.”

[radlymona]

I can’t get over the mass rape case in France. It disturbs me on so many fucking levels but one thing that has stuck with me is that he was with her for 30+ years before the rapes began. According to the victim (Gisèle Pelicot, who I consider to be one of the bravest people on earth for going public with the trial) she considered her and husband be an idyllic couple. She loved him. And she thought he loved her. For thirty fucking years she was with him through thick and thin and in their late 50s he started raping her. I never want to hear another woman shamed for “choosing wrong”. It can happen at any fucking time no matter how much you think he loves you. This is so fucking terrifying

[rapeculturerealities]

51 men guilty of rape: How Gisele Pelicot trial sparked a mass movement

The French rape trial that shocked the world and sparked widespread calls for justice for women rape victims ended on Thursday with the conviction of 51 men for raping and attempting to rape Gisele Pelicot, including her husband, who drugged and arranged the abuse for years.

Dominique Pelicot, her husband, was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while the other 50 men were sentenced to between three and 15 years. Two were found guilty of attempted rape and two of sexual assault, while the rest were found guilty of rape.

A crowd of demonstrators burst into applause and cheers outside the courtroom in Avignon, southern France, as the verdict was read aloud. For months, protesters swarmed the outside of the courtroom, cheering in support of Gisele Pelicot and the feminist motto her case sparked – "shame must change sides."

"I am thinking about the unrecognized victims whose stories often remain in the shadows, I want you to know that we share the same battle," she said in a statement after the verdict.

[someone-will-remember-us]

So many aspects of the trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other defendants in France over the past month have been so extraordinary to experience that they feel somehow surreal, or upside-down. In 2020, Gisèle Pelicot, a 67-year-old retiree living in the small French town of Mazan, was told by police that her husband of almost 50 years, Dominique, had been arrested after trying to film up women’s skirts in a shopping center. At first, Gisèle was cautiously understanding. If Dominique was willing to go into therapy, she thought, they could stay together. But then the police confronted her with something infinitely more shocking. On his hard drive, a folder titled “abuse” contained some 20,000 photographs and videos of Gisèle being raped and assaulted by strange men—72 in total—as well as her husband. For about a decade, they told her, he had been drugging her food and drink, and inviting men he met on the internet to abuse her. In court last month, Dominique Pelicot validated the charges against him. “I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” he said. Fourteen of the other men on trial have pleaded guilty to the charges against them, but the majority claim innocence, arguing that they thought they were simply participating in a “libertine” game between husband and wife.

Before his arrest, with regard to his own security, Dominique was meticulous to a fault. The men who came to his home had to warm their hands on a radiator before entering his bedroom. They had to undress in the kitchen. They weren’t to smell of cigarette smoke or aftershave, lest they leave any discernible trace of themselves behind. If Gisèle stirred while an assault was ongoing, Dominique ordered the assailant to leave the room. He kept detailed records, saving videos and photographs of each man in file folders categorized by their first name—“part pleasure,” he later explained in court, “but also, part insurance.” With regard to his wife’s safety, however, he was strikingly nonchalant. He didn’t require that any of the men accused of raping his wife use condoms. Some are accused of choking her while Dominique watched; others, of assaulting her with objects. One man, who was HIV-positive, allegedly raped Gisèle on six separate occasions, telling Dominique that he couldn’t maintain an erection if he wore protection. When Gisèle began to complain of strange physical symptoms—substantial weight loss, hair loss, huge gaps in her memory, difficulty moving her arm—Dominique drove her to doctor appointments, but didn’t stop drugging her, or facilitating her abuse. When she mentioned that she’d been having unexplained gynecological issues, he accused her of cheating on him. Of her husband, she said in court: “In 50 years, I never imagined for a second that he could rape.”

The mass trial of Dominique and 50 other men who could be identified (more than 20 alleged assailants remain at large) began in September, exposing a case that’s both wholly unprecedented and dully familiar. The fact that we’re aware of it at all is because of Gisèle, who gave up her right to privacy so that the allegations of what happened to her could be made public. What she believed, her lawyer said, was that “shame must change sides”—for the men accused of raping and assaulting her to be the ones whose characters were stained, whose reputations were maligned. In the process, she’s become a feminist icon in France, in whose name women’s groups have rallied, seeking to raise awareness about sex crimes involving drugging and pointing out that women are most likely to be raped by someone they know. Every day, before she enters the courtroom, Gisèle is applauded by crowds who have gathered outside to support her.

In court, though, Gisèle’s cross-examination has mostly been by the book, which is to say that lawyers for the defense—more than 40 in number—have done everything they can to impugn her character. “There’s rape and there’s rape,” one defense attorney told her, implying, as many of the defendants have argued, that Gisèle and her husband were swingers participating in an elaborate sex game. “No, there are no different types of rape,” she replied. Although the judges in the trial denied the prosecution’s request that videos documenting her abuse be shown in court, agreeing with defense lawyers that doing so would compromise the dignityof the defendants, they did allow those lawyers to show some 27 pictures that revealed Gisèle’s genitalia, and her face with her eyes apparently open. (A medical expert has testified that, given the medication Dominique was secretly administering, Gisèle was so heavily sedated, she was closer to being in a coma than being asleep.) Lawyers asked her whether she was an alcoholic, and whether she had “a secret inclination for exhibitionism.” In response, Gisèle stated that every day since the beginning of the trial, she’d been intentionally humiliated, and that she understood why most rape victims don’t press charges. Although she appears composed on the surface, she has said that, internally, she is “a field of ruins.” Even so, a few weeks into the trial, one defense lawyer, Nadia El Bouroumi, posted an Instagram Reel of herself in her car, miming to the Wham song “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” (She later deleted the video and posted a statement saying she was profoundly sorry if her meaning had been misinterpreted.)

This kind of ritualized cruelty toward victims is standard in legal systems worldwide, and yet the Pelicot case has stripped away all the usual obfuscations and muddying of details to make certain things clear. There are just so many accused rapists in this case, each one caught on camera. There are so many men who are alleged to have assaulted a drugged grandmother of seven that before they go into the courtroom, they have to form a queue, shuffling one by one in hunched, sullen fashion, as though waiting in a breadline, or for a bus. The men range in age from their 20s to their 70s. One was a firefighter. One was a nurse. One was a journalist. One was a prison guard, one a civil servant. Many were apparently happily married with children. One, a 22-year-old, missed the birth of his daughter the night he went to allegedly rape Gisèle.

Not all men rape women, the adage goes. But the Pelicot case has upended that argument: not all men, but any man, of any age, any profession, any marital status. Living in a small town of 6,000 people, Dominique was able to find 72 men nearby who were allegedly willing—as per his invitation on a forum titled “Without Their Knowledge”—to “abuse my sleeping, drugged wife.” The site he used, Coco.fr, was shut down earlier this year, but it has been implicated in 23,000 separate crimes that are under investigation by more than 70 public prosecutors’ offices across France. Not all men but, still, so many men. One defendant in the Pelicot case, a 72-year-old former firefighter and truck driver who was described by friends and family as “kind,” “attentive,” and “open to others,” told the courtroom that he had “a deep respect for women,” and that if his ex-wife were present, she’d tell them, “He loves the woman in all her diversity, all her complexity.” Nevertheless, he is accused of raping an unconscious woman, Gisèle’s lawyer countered; the man has denied the accusation. Another defendant explained that he realized what he was doing was wrong when Gisèle moved while he was assaulting her, and Dominique quickly ushered him out of the room. “When I crossed the garden, I thought about reporting the incident,” he said in court. “Then life resumed its course; the next day, I went to work very early, and that was that.”

The men accused of raping and assaulting Gisèle, it’s worth remembering, are so numerous that they were arrested in five separate waves, spanning almost a year. In court every week, a new group of defendants has been presented to the judges for consideration, so that their psychological profiles and the testimony of their partners and ex-partners can be taken into account. One defendant, a private nurse, was apparently extremely empathetic to his patients, whom he considered family. He and his wife tried for many years to have children, undergoing multiple rounds of IVF and eventually hoping to adopt. Another, a mason, was reportedly a wonderful father whose friends testified that he was respectful and quiet, never even making dirty jokes at parties. Some of the men have been described as egocentric, aggressive, and routinely unfaithful. One was incarcerated for acts of sexual violence against three other women at the time of his arrest. One has asked about the possibility of restorative justice. Some confessed to having been abused as children. One, although not charged with assaulting Gisèle, is accused of being mentored by Dominique in the drugging and rape of his own wife, who has stayed with him despite learning that both her husband and Dominique allegedly raped her while she was unconscious on several occasions. One defendant was described by his fiancée, with whom he shares a 15-month-old child conceived after his arrest, as having a “heart of gold.”

Following along with the trial, what’s been hard to process is the disconnect between how the defendants are being treated and what Gisèle has endured. The men’s psychological profiles are inherently humanizing—it’s difficult not to feel pity for those whose children have died, or who were reportedly abused themselves, or who apparently fought for their children with special needs to receive the educational assistance they needed. And yet these men also allegedly participated in the abuse and rape of a passed-out woman: an immobile, voiceless, dehumanized body served up to them by her husband, whose actions implied—and were accepted by the men—as ownership. “If a man came to have intercourse with me, he still should have asked for my consent,” Gisèle said in court. But that acquiescence itself would have been in opposition to what so many men apparently wanted: ultimate sexual domination over someone who couldn’t consent, orchestrated by the one man whom she loved and trusted the most.

(archive)

[warningsine]

A court on Thursday, December 19, sentenced Dominique Pelicot to 20 years in jail for committing and orchestrating the mass rapes of his now former wife Gisèle Pelicot with dozens of strangers. Her children expressed disappointment at what they saw as overly-lenient sentences for the other men convicted.

The convictions of all 51 defendants and their sentencing brought to a close a three-month trial that has horrified France, resonated across the world and turned Gisèle Pelicot into an icon of female courage.

Dominique Pelicot, who had already confessed to the crimes, was earlier found guilty by the court in the southern city of Avignon. His 50 co-defendants were also convicted by the court, with no acquittals. They received jail terms of between three and 15 years – less than what prosecutors had demanded. Two of these defendants had their prison terms suspended.

The three Pelicot children "are disappointed by these low sentences," said a family member, asking not to be identified, adding that there was "no question" of any of the children wanting to speak to their father after the conviction.

Tension was palpable in the courtroom at the start of the hearing, where a heavy police presence was deployed. Many defendants arrived with their bags packed ready for prison. One of them was in tears as he hugged his companion before entering the courtroom.

"Mr. Pelicot, you are found guilty of the aggravated rape of Gisèle Pelicot," said the presiding judge of the criminal court, Roger Arata. Delivering sentence, Arata said Dominique Pelicot will not be eligible for parole until he has served two-thirds of his sentence.

'Justice for Gisèle'

Dominique Pelicot, 72, has admitted to drugging Gisèle Pelicot for almost a decade so he and strangers he recruited online could rape her. His lawyer did not rule out appealing the verdict. "We're going to use the 10 days which we have to decide whether or not to appeal this decision," Béatrice Zavarro told reporters.

Gisèle Pelicot, 72, has become a feminist hero at home and abroad for refusing to be ashamed, waiving her right to a closed trial and standing up to her aggressors in court. Alongside her ex-husband, 50 other men aged 27 to 74 have been on trial, including one who did not abuse her but raped his own wife with Dominique Pelicot's help.

Earlier Thursday, Gisèle Pelicot arrived at the courthouse smiling and cheered by crowds of supporters and feminist activists waiting outside. They chanted her name and slogans like "Justice for Gisèle" and "Shame has Changed Sides".

On November 25, prosecutors requested the maximum sentence against Dominique Pelicot for aggravated rape. It was widely expected that Dominique Pelicot would receive the full 20-year term, but considerably more uncertainty had surrounded the sentencing of the other defendants. The prosecution had requested 10 to 18 years in prison against the 49 defendants also charged with aggravated rape. One of these accused is on the run and being tried in absentia.

One more accused – facing the lesser charge of groping – had risked up to four years in prison. Thirty-two of the accused attended the trial as free men while the others, including Dominique Pelicot, were remanded in custody.

'World is watching'

"Rape affects women all over the world, that's why the whole world has its eyes on what's going to happen," said Ghislaine Sainte Catherine, one of the members of the Amazons of Avignon feminist collective.

Gisèle Pelicot's children, David, Caroline and Florian, arrived half an hour earlier, entering the courtroom alongside a group of men accused of raping their mother. "We came with our things for prison," said one of the defendants, pointing to the sports bags on the ground.

The case has sparked protests and drew fresh attention to male violence in France. Rights activists hope that the trial will lead to change in society. "It's time that the macho, patriarchal society that trivializes rape changes," Gisèle Pelicot said in November.

Her pictures dominated the front pages of major French papers on Thursday. "A verdict for the future," said left-leaning Libération. "Merci madame," said L'Humanite, while La Provenance declared "the moment of truth."

[follow-up-news]

Dozens of men, including the ex-husband of Gisèle Pelicot, were Thursday found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting her in a historic trial that shocked France.  Speaking with journalists in the southern town of Avignon after the verdicts were read, Pelicot, 72, said the outcome of her case gave her faith in a future in which “everybody, women, men can live together in harmony, in respect and in mutual understanding.” Pelicot, who has become a hero to many in France for choosing to waive her right to anonymity and highlight the crimes orchestrated by her husband, added that she had fought the case with her children and her grandchildren in mind “because they are the future,” according to a live translation by NBC News’ British broadcasting partner, Sky News.

[capricorn-season]

[riverlarking]

🙏🙏🙏🙏

[tlacatecctzin]

Breaking: Gisèle Pelicot verdicts

We need to organise protests. Everywhere.

[janesurlife]

I swear to god y'all the dumbest, most ignorant mother fuckers to ever walk the earth cause how are you going to call two men (who have been teammates for four years) hitting eachother below the belt SEXUAL ASSAULT when we're witnessing Giselle Pelicot case RIGHT NOW. SEXUAL ASSAULT is not a word you use lightly. How stupid do you have to be to ignore all the women (and men too) who have suffered through something as traumatizing as SA. Just yesterday I read about the france mass rape trial and when I tell you I felt disgusting to my bones I am not even exaggerating. So please for the love of God stop comparing this stupid incident to SA.

[procelibacyactivism]

She had no idea that, in his late 50s and nearing retirement, her husband Dominique Pelicot had been spending a lot of time on the internet, often talking to users on open forums and chatrooms where sexual material – often extreme or illegal – was freely available.

In court, he would later pinpoint that phase as the trigger for his "perversion" after a childhood trauma of rape and abuse: "We become perverted when we find something that gives us the means: the internet."

oh my God he's blaming internet porn and csa for being a monster. women are by far the group most likely to have been sexually abused as children you don't see them do this shit. sadistic fuck ups always find a way to shift blame. Hope he gets what he deserves in prison. (I hope they don't segregate him)

[rvllybllply2014]

In previous testimony, many defendants told the court that they couldn’t have imagined that Dominique Pelicot was drugging his wife, and that they were told she was a willing participant acting out a kinky fantasy.

Dominique Pelicot has previously tearfully acknowledged in court that he’s guilty of the allegations against him. He said all of his co-defendants understood exactly what they were doing when he invited them to his home in Provence between 2011 and 2020 to have sex with his unconscious and unwitting wife, who divorced him after learning what he had done to her. He had no difficulty finding dozens of men to take part.

The other men are only facing up to ten years, and I’m not buying the oh we didn’t know it was rape. She was fucking snoring in some videos, they were told to not make too much noise and to warm their hands. They knew they were raping a defenseless woman.

[someone-will-remember-us]

It was November 2011, and Gisèle Pelicot was sleeping too much.

She spent most of her weekends in a slumber. She was annoyed, because during the week she worked hard as a supply chain manager, and her time off was precious.

Yet she could not seem to stay awake, often drifting off without even realising it and waking hours later with no memory of having gone to bed.

Despite this, Gisèle, 58, was happy. She counted herself lucky to have her husband of 38 years, Dominique, by her side. Now their three children Caroline, David and Florian were grown, the couple were planning to soon retire and move to Mazan, a village of 6,000 people in France's idyllic southern region of Provence, where Mr Pelicot could go on bike rides and she could take Lancôme, their French bulldog, on long walks.

She had loved Dominique since they met in the early 1970s. "When I saw that young man in a blue jumper it was love at first sight," Gisèle would reflect, much later. They both had complicated family histories marked by loss and trauma, and had found peace with one another. Their four decades together had hit rough patches - frequent financial troubles and her affair with a colleague in the mid-1980s – but they had made it through.

Years later, when asked by a lawyer to sum up their relationship, she said: "Our friends used to say we were the perfect couple. And I thought we would see our days through together."

By that point, Gisèle and Dominique were sitting on opposite sides of a courtroom in Avignon, not far from Mazan: she surrounded by their children and her lawyers, and he, dressed in grey, prison-issue clothes, in the defendants' glass box.

He was facing the maximum jail term for aggravated rape and was rapidly becoming known in France and beyond as – in his own daughter's words – "one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 years".

But in 2011, when Gisèle felt she was sleeping too much, she couldn't have guessed that was how things would play out.

She had no idea that, in his late 50s and nearing retirement, her husband Dominique Pelicot had been spending a lot of time on the internet, often talking to users on open forums and chatrooms where sexual material – often extreme or illegal – was freely available.

In court, he would later pinpoint that phase as the trigger for his "perversion" after a childhood trauma of rape and abuse: "We become perverted when we find something that gives us the means: the internet."

Sometime between 2010 and 2011, a man claiming to be a nurse sent Mr Pelicot photos of his wife, drugged with sleeping pills to the point of unconsciousness. He also shared precise instructions with Mr Pelicot so that he could do the same to Gisèle.

At first he hesitated – but not for long.

Through trial and error he realised that with the right dosage of pills he could plunge his wife into a sleep so deep nothing would wake her. They had been lawfully prescribed by his doctor, who thought Mr Pelicot suffered from anxiety due to financial troubles.

He would then be able to dress her in lingerie she refused to wear, or put her through sexual practices she would have never accepted while conscious. He could film the scenes, which she would not have allowed while awake.

Initially, he was the only one raping her. But by the time the couple had settled in Mazan in 2014, he had perfected and expanded his operation.

He kept tranquilisers in a shoebox in the garage, and switched brands because the first tasted "too salty" to be surreptitiously added to his wife's food and drink, he said later.

On a chatroom called "without her knowledge" he recruited men of all ages to come and abuse his wife.

He would film them too.

He told the court his wife's unconscious state was clear to the 71 men who came to their house over the course of a decade. "You're just like me, you like rape mode," he told one of them in the chat.

As the years went by, the effects of the abuse Ms Pelicot was subjected to at night increasingly began to seep into her waking life. She lost weight, clumps of hair fell out and her blackouts became more frequent. She was riddled with anxiety, certain that she was nearing death.

Her family became worried. She had seemed healthy and active when she had visited them.

"We'd ring her but most of the time it was Dominique who picked up. He would tell us Gisèle was asleep, even in the middle of the day," said her son-in-law Pierre. "But it seemed likely because she was doing so much [when she was with us], especially running after the grandchildren."

Police station visit changed everything

Sometimes, Gisèle came close to having suspicions. Once, she had noticed the green colour of a beer her husband had handed her, and hastily poured it down the sink. Another time, she noticed a bleach stain she couldn't recall making on a new pair of trousers. "You're not drugging me by any chance, are you?" she remembered asking him. He broke down in tears: "How can you accuse me of such a thing?"

Mostly, though, she felt lucky to have him with her as she navigated her health issues. She developed gynaecological problems, and underwent several neurological tests to determine if she was suffering from Alzheimer's or a brain tumour, as she feared, but the results didn't explain the increasing tiredness and the blackouts.

Several years later, during the trial, Dominique's brother Joel, a doctor, was asked how it was possible that medical professionals had never put the clues together and understood Gisèle was a victim of the little-known phenomenon of chemical submission – drug-facilitated rape. "In the field of medicine we only find what we're looking for, and we look for what we know," he replied.

Gisèle only felt better when she was away from Mazan – an oddity she barely noticed.

It was on her return from one of these trips, in September 2020, that Dominique told her, in floods of tears: "I did something stupid. I was caught filming under women's clothes in a supermarket," she recalled during the trial.

She was very surprised, she said, because "in 50 years he had never behaved inappropriately or used obscene words towards women".

She said she forgave him but asked him to promise her he would seek help.

He acquiesced, "and we left it at that", she said.

But Dominique must have known the end was near.

Soon after he was arrested in the supermarket, police confiscated his two phones and his laptop, where they would inevitably find more than 20,000 videos and photos of his wife being raped by him and others.

"I watched those videos for hours. It was troubling. Of course it had an impact on me," Jérémie Bosse Platière, the director of the investigation, told the court.

"In 33 years in the police, I'd never really seen that sort of thing," his colleague Stéphane Gal said. "It was sordid, it was shocking."

His team was tasked with tracking down the men in the videos. They cross-checked the faces and names of the men carefully logged by Dominique alongside facial recognition technology.

They were eventually able to identify 54 of them, while another 21 remained nameless.

Some of the men who were unidentified said in conversations with Dominique that they were also drugging their partners. "That, for me, is the most painful part of the case," Mr Bosse Platière said. "To know that there are some women out there who could still be victims of their husbands."

On 2 November 2020, Dominique and Gisèle had breakfast together before heading to a police station, where Mr Pelicot had been summoned in relation to the upskirting incident. She was asked by a policeman to follow him into another room. She confirmed Dominque was her husband - "a great guy, a good man" – but denied ever taking part in swinging with him, or engaging in threesomes.

"I will show you something you won't like," the police chief warned her, before showing her a picture of a sexual act.

At first, she didn't recognise any of the two people.

When she did, "I told him to stop... Everything caved in, everything I built for 50 years".

She was sent home in a state of shock, accompanied by a friend. She had to tell her children what had happened.

Recalling that moment, Gisèle said that her "daughter's screams are forever etched in my mind". Caroline, David and Florian came down to Mazan and cleared out the house. Later, photos of a seemingly drugged Caroline were also found on Dominique's laptop, although he has denied abusing her.

'You cannot imagine the unimaginable'

David, the eldest child, said they no longer had any family photos because they "got rid of everything linked to my father there and then". Within days, Gisèle's life was reduced to a suitcase and her dog.

Meanwhile, Dominique admitted to his crimes and was formally arrested. He thanked police for "relieving him of a burden".

He and Gisèle wouldn't meet again until they sat facing one another in the Avignon courtroom in September 2024.

By then, the story of the husband who drugged his wife for a decade and invited strangers to rape her had started to ripple across the world, aided by Gisèle's unusual and remarkable decision to waive her anonymity and open the trial to the public and the media.

"I want any woman who wakes up one morning with no memories of the night before to remember what I said," she stated. "So that no more women can fall prey to chemical submission. I was sacrificed on the altar of vice, and we need to talk about it."

Her legal team also successfully pushed for the videos taken to be shown in court, arguing they would "undo the thesis of accidental rape" – pushing back against the line of defence that the men had not meant to rape Gisèle as they didn't realise she was unconscious.

"She wanted shame to change sides and it has," a woman who came to watch the trial in Avignon said in November. "Gisèle turned everything on its head. We weren't expecting a woman like this."

Medical examiner Anne Martinat Sainte-Beuve said that in the wake of her husband's arrest, Gisèle was clearly traumatised but calm and distant – a coping mechanism often employed by survivors of terrorist attacks.

Gisèle herself has said that she is "a field of ruins" and that she fears the rest of her life may not be enough to rebuild herself.

Ms Sainte-Beuve said she had found Gisèle "exceptionally resilient": "She turned what could have destroyed her into strength."

Days before the trial started, the Pelicots' divorce was finalised.

Gisèle has gone back to her maiden name. She went by the name Pelicot for the trial so that her grandchildren could be "proud" of being related to her and not ashamed of being associated to Dominique.

She has since moved to a village far from Mazan. She sees a psychiatrist but doesn't take any medication, because she no longer wants to ingest any substance. She continues to go on long walks, but is no longer tired.

In the early days of the trial, Caroline's husband Pierre took the stand.

A defence lawyer asked him about the Mazan years, when Gisèle was suffering from memory loss and her husband was dutifully accompanying her to unfruitful medical appointments. How could the family not have realised what was happening?

Pierre shook his head.

"You are forgetting one thing," he said. "You cannot imagine the unimaginable."

(archive)

[warningsine]

The curtain falls on the mass rape trial that shocked the world and saw Gisèle Pelicot emerge as a feminist hero.

After two and a half months of hearings, the Criminal Court in Avignon on Thursday found 51 defendants guilty of the rape, attempted rape and sexual assault of Gisèle Pelicot. The majority of defendants were handed prison terms of three-to-15 years – less than the four-to-18 years demanded by the prosecution.

Gisèle Pelicot’s ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, received the heaviest sentence of 20 years in prison for drugging his wife and inviting strangers he met online to rape her for nearly a decade. He received a two-thirds minimum sentence period, meaning he won't be eligible to ask for early release until at least two-thirds of his sentence has been served.

Dominique Pelicot's lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, who said she would consider an appeal, described her client as “stunned”. But she also expressed hope that Gisèle Pelicot would find solace in the rulings.

“I wanted Mrs. Pelicot to be able to emerge from these hearings in peace, and I think that the verdicts will contribute to this relief for Mrs. Pelicot," she said.

‘Here, we judge; we do not legislate’

The shortest prison sentences were handed to two defendants, known to the media as Joseph C. and Saiffedine G., who both received three years in prison with two years suspended for aggravated sexual assault. Saiffedine G.’s crime was reclassified as sexual assault in the verdict. 

Another defendant, Hassan O., who fled to Morocco and never appeared in court, was sentenced in absentia to 12 years in prison.

Around 40 of the defendants went straight from the courtroom to prison but others will not be incarcerated straight away.

The defendants have 10 days to appeal the judgment.

Overall the punishments handed down were less severe than those requested by the public prosecutor, who at the end of November called for sentences of four to 18 years for the majority of defendants and the maximum penalty of 20 years of criminal imprisonment for Dominique Pelicot.

Many of the defendants received 12-year prison sentences – slightly longer than the average sentence for rape of 11.1 years in 2022 according to the ministry of justice.

“The sentences were adjusted, and that's a good thing,” said Roland Marbillot, a lawyer for two of the defendants.

“One of my clients won't be incarcerated right away; the other will but will likely be released in a few weeks or months."

Marbillot added: "I would like to remind everyone that here we judge; we do not legislate," noting that it was a good thing that “the debate on consent did not dominate this trial”.

The mass rape trial has reignited the debate about the absence of consent as a legal criterion for rape in France.

France’s criminal code currently defines rape as a sexual act committed "by violence, coercion, threat or surprise", with no notion of whether or not consent is necessary.

At the end of September, the outgoing Minister of Justice Didier Migaud expressed his support for including consent in the French Penal Code.

‘I think of all the unrecognised victims’

Gisèle Pelicot and her lawyers arrived at the courthouse shortly after 9am, surrounded by a swarm of cameras. Her three children, Caroline, Florian, and David, were also present with their spouses.

Inside the courtroom, the red-haired septuagenarian, dressed in a blue striped shirt, nodded as the sentences were announced.

After the hearing, Gisèle Pelicot declined to answer questions but read a statement in which she thanked her loved ones: “I think of my three children. I also think of my grandchildren, who are the future, and it is also for them that I am fighting this battle.”

She also paid tribute to the “other families affected by this tragedy” and other victims of sexual assault. To “the unrecognised victims whose stories remain in the shadows… we share the same fight," she said.

Gisèle Pelicot did not comment on individual sentences but she said she respected the court’s verdict and did not regret her decision to make the trial public, in order to raise awareness about the use of drugs to enable sexual assault.

“By opening the doors to this trial, I wanted society to engage with the debates, and I have never regretted it,” she said.

‘Shame on justice’

Outside the courtroom supporters of Gisèle Pelicot gathered to hear the verdicts, which many felt were too lenient. Several chanted “Shame on justice!” and “Justice is complicit!” after they were announced.

"Feminists and women feel humiliated, disappointed and angry that the courts have handed down extremely low sentences,” said Blandine Deverlanges, president of the feminist collective Les Amazones d'Avignon. “Tonight, dozens of men will be going home and it's really unbearable to think that these men will be able to spend Christmas with their families."

Feminist groups are planning to protest at 1pm on Friday over the verdict, which they believe does not reflect the gravity of the crimes against Gisèle Pelicot.

“The question we're asking ourselves is whether women will continue to have confidence in the justice system,” Deverlanges said. “Personally, I'm beginning to despair and I think that women are going to start organising themselves to deliver justice.”

A lawyer for one of the defendants, Christophe Bruschi, was jostled and jeered by more than 100 feminist protesters, whom he referred to as “knitters”.

Throughout the trial, tensions between the defence and some feminist groups ran high, with lawyers accusing the groups of trying to influence the judges. Three weeks earlier, city officials removed a banner reading “20 years for all”, hung on the ramparts opposite the courthouse.

For the final day of the sprawling 15-week trial, which has seen scores of defendants take the stand, the courts implemented exceptional security measures, with nearly 200 police officers and gendarmes securing the courthouse in Avignon. 

In an indication of how the trial has captured global attention, there were also four broadcast rooms for journalists and the public.

At around 1:30pm a cheer rose up as Gisèle Pelicot left the courthouse under heavy police escort.

Women outside the courtroom chanted “Thank you, Gisèle!” as she slowly made her way through the crowds

[head-post]

How Pélicot case exposed rape culture in France

50 people stood trial, accused of raping the motionless body of Gisèle Pélicot while her husband recorded their actions for his video library. The unprecedented mass rape case revealed the actual image of a rapist, according to AP News.

A trial in France shows how pornography, sex chat rooms and men’s disdain for consent are fuelling rape culture. French society was disturbed not by the fact that her husband Dominique Pélicot orchestrated the mass rape, but that he had no difficulty finding dozens of men who agreed to engage in unlawful sexual acts.

One of the rapists, a married plumber with three children and five grandchildren, said he was not particularly bothered that the woman was not moving when he visited the Pélicot family home in the town of Mazan in 2019. He stated that it reminded him of adult videos, featuring women “pretending to be asleep and don’t react,” he watched.

Many of the other defendants told the court that they could not have imagined Dominique Pélicot drugging his wife and that they were told she was a willing participant acting out a perverted fantasy. However, the husband denied the accusation, claiming that his co-defendants was aware of the situation.

Pornography flourishing

Céline Piques, a spokesperson of the feminist group Osez le Féminisme!, or Dare Feminism! stated that many of the men under investigation were perverted by pornography. Although some websites started fighting search terms such as “unconscious,” hundreds of such videos could still be found online, Piques stressed.

Last year, French authorities registered 114,000 victims of sexual violence, including more than 25,000 reported rapes. However, experts argue that most rape cases go unreported due to a lack of tangible evidence. Many women do not press charges, with most dropping cases before investigations start.

The Pélicot case was unique in the French judicial system. After a shop security guard caught Dominique Pélicot making videos of unsuspecting women’s skirts in 2020, police searched his home and found thousands of pornographic photos and videos. The main defendant later revealed that he had recorded and stored the sexual encounters of each of his guests and organised them neatly in separate files.

France thrilled world community

Gisèle Pélicot, who is in her early 70s, did not know she had been raped. She chose to stay in the courtroom while the videos were shown. Unable to watch, she closed her eyes, stared at the floor or buried her face in her hands.

Sexual assault experts say the unwillingness or inability of the accused to confess to rape reveals the taboos and stereotypes that persist in French society. Magali Lafourcade, a judge and general secretary of the National Consultative Commission of Human Rights, did not attend the trial but said popular culture had given people a wrong idea of what rapists looked like and how they acted.

It’s the idea of a hooded man with a knife whom you don’t know and is waiting for you in a place that is not a private place.

Two-thirds of rapes occurred in private homes, with the vast majority of victims knowing their rapists, Lafourcade emphasised. She drew attention to the frightening reality that the Pélicot case “makes us realise that in fact rapists could be anyone.”

For once, they’re not monsters – they’re not serial killers on the margin of society. They are men who resemble those we love. In this sense, there is something revolutionary.

Read more HERE

[destinyc1020]

⚠️ **TRIGGER WARNING: R*pe**

WHAT??? 😡

His own WIFE???

You have GOT to be kidding me! 😡 No, I had NOT heard about this.

There's a special place for men like this. Smh 🤦🏾‍♀️