Katherine Butler, associate editor, Europe
Wed 9 October 2024
The story of Gisèle Pelicot has mobilised people in France.Photograph: Berzane Nasser/ABACA/REX/Shutterstock
It is the trial that has shaken France to its core, and shocked the world.
Dominique Pelicot, a retired estate agent, is accused of drugging his wife Gisèle and recruiting other men online over nine years to sexually assault her at their home. Pelicot has admitted rape. Fifty other men are on trial for alleged rape alongside him.
But it is Gisèle Pelicot, the victim, who has for many people become the focus of this horrifying story. Thousands have turned out in towns and cities across France to demonstrate in solidarity with her and against “rape culture” in France. Last week, Le Monde published a joint “letter” to Gisèle from four members of parliament, calling her “heroic” and demanding a parliamentary debate on how French law defines rape. Her courage has made her a “feminist icon”, the New York Times said.
Gisèle Pelicot has chosen to refuse the anonymity usually granted in rape cases, and attends the trial sessions in Avignon, in order – she says – to shift the shame and humiliation often faced by victims of sexual violence on to the alleged perpetrators.
Angelique Chrisafis, the Guardian’s France correspondent, has reported on such unspeakably violent events as the Bataclan massacre in 2015 and the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice in 2016. Yet, covering the Pelicot case stood out, she told me, because of the scale of the sexual violence, and because such a trial would normally be held behind closed doors away from the media.
That this case is being heard in public is at Gisèle’s insistence. Why has she fought so hard to have potentially traumatising evidence aired this way?
“Gisèle Pelicot wanted the trial to be public to draw attention to the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse,” Angelique said. “That’s why she called for the lifting of restrictions on the screening of video evidence in the trial. Her lawyer said the ‘shock wave’ of this public trial and public video evidence was necessary to show the true horror of rape. He said for Pelicot herself: ‘It is too late. The harm is done. But if these hearings, through being publicised, help prevent other women from having to go through this, then she will find meaning in her suffering’.”
Angelique, whose podcast Today in Focus interview on the case is worth a listen, explained that the trial is also highly unusual because it can’t rely on the victim’s evidence.
“In most rape trials, the alleged rape would be detailed by the victim’s word against the word of the alleged attacker. But in this case, the victim has no word on what happened because she was drugged and comatose with no recollection. Instead, the main defendant, Dominique Pelicot, has admitted rape and meticulously kept video evidence. It is that video evidence which is crucial – without it there wouldn’t be a trial. So often, in other rape cases, there is no such video evidence.”
The court proceedings have highlighted confusion over what constitutes consent and raised questions about online chatrooms and pornography. Gisèle Pelicot has told the court that she could not have consented as she was in a comatose state.
“Some of the men on trial with Pelicot accept that what they did was rape and have apologised in court. But many argue that they didn’t intend to commit rape, saying they thought Gisèle was pretending to be asleep and that they were pressured into it,” Angelique said. “The courtroom testimony has highlighted how society in general has not yet got a clear understanding of consent. The trial has opened a debate on whether to more explicitly spell out the active need for consent within the law on rape in France.”
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Ordinary men, monstrous crimes
Could Gisèle Pelicot’s conduct and the extensive media coverage of the case mark a turning point for attitudes in France, and perhaps elsewhere?
“Many French writers have said this case marks the end of a stereotype of the ‘monster’ rapist - or the notion that rapes are only carried out by strangers,” Angelique said. “Instead it has highlighted the dangers women face in their own homes and within marriages or relationships. Some of the accused men had notable jobs in society such as local councillor, nurse, prison warden or journalist.”
Some media have labelled Dominique Pelicot “the monster of Avignon”. But among those people who have turned out to demonstrate on behalf of Gisèle or to applaud her in court, many are appalled by the apparently “normal” profile of the accused men. This is why chants include: “We are all Gisèle,” and “Rapist we see you, victim we believe you.” Angelique noted graffiti in Avignon that read: “Ordinary men, horrible crimes.” In Marseille a banner read: “Shame must change sides,” echoing Gisèle Pelicot’s own words.
And could the case ultimately change how victims of sexual violence are perceived?
“An important aspect of this trial and the feminist icon status of Gisèle Pelicot is that she can be seen in many ways as an irreproachable victim: a grandmother who had no knowledge of the attacks she was subjected to.”
“Yet, as happens with many rape victims in court, some defence lawyers have still questioned her sexuality in court and asked if the men might not have thought she was looking for sexual encounters.”
Angelique added: “Gisèle has said she felt humiliated and under attack in court. That this trial is being held in public has allowed more people to experience how a rape trial is conducted.”
One woman who came to court in support of Gisèle told Angelique that the case was “so beyond comprehension” that she needed to understand it. Her conclusion? “Things have to change.”
Pelicot trial: French court hears how mass rape went undetected for years
Relatives of Gisèle Pelicot, the woman at the heart of a mass rape trial that has shaken France, testified in court on Tuesday about the deterioration they witnessed in Pelicot’s health throughout her almost decade-long ordeal, and the failure to determine its cause. Their accounts shed light on the widespread ignorance of drug-facilitated abuse that allowed the victim’s ordeal to go undetected for years.
Issued on: 09/10/2024 -
By :Louis CHAHUNEAU
FRANCE24
Pelicot’s former husband Dominique, 71, is standing trial in the city of Avignon, along with 50 other men, accused of drugging his wife and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her in a case that has stunned the nation and made headlines around the world.
The affaire Mazan, after the small town in Provence where the couple lived, has been described as many things at once: a trial of warped masculinity and patriarchal domination, of societal indifference to the abuse suffered by women, and of French laws on sexual crimes that critics say omit the notion of consent.
The chilling case has also prompted soul-searching among health workers in France, highlighting doctors’ struggle to detect the signs of drug-facilitated abuse – known in France as “chemical submission”.
“To understand the origin of all this, we would have had to think of the unimaginable,” Joël Pelicot, a doctor and Dominique Pelicot's elder brother, told the court on Tuesday, illustrating widespread ignorance of the use of drugs to prey on women, particularly in cases of domestic abuse.
A court sketch showing Joël Pelicot (centre), the brother of the main suspect in the mass rape trial that has shaken France, at the hearing in Avignon on October 8, 2024. © Benoît Peyrucq, AFP“But we didn’t think of it,” added the bespectacled doctor, 76, one of several medical practitioners who prescribed an anti-anxiety drug known as Temesta to Gisèle Pelicot, telling the court that “she suffered from bouts of anxiety and had trouble sleeping”.
A common drug
After previously testing a variety of drugs and sleeping pills, Dominique Pelicot began administering Temesta to his wife in 2015, acting on the advice of a nurse he met online. The drugs put his wife into a deep sleep, allowing him to sexually abuse her without her realising.
The pensioner himself had been prescribed Temesta for several years, the court learned on Tuesday, telling his doctor he was experiencing financial difficulties and suffering from anxiety. Prescribing Temesta for patients who suffer from sleep disorders or anxiety is extremely common in France, to the point that pharmacies frequently run out of the drug.
Once he had honed his method, Dominique Pelicot contacted dozens of strangers on the Coco.fr dating website and invited them to rape his sedated wife. To ensure that she remained inert, he gradually increased the doses, to between three and ten tablets a day, which he crushed into her food and drink.
There were warning signs, such as the day Gisèle Pelicot noticed that her beer was a dubious shade of green, but little to suggest the extent of the scheme. In all, nearly 780 Temesta tablets were prescribed by various doctors until 2020, the year Dominique Pelicot was arrested.
Read more‘I was convinced it was a game': Defendants begin testifying at Pelicot rape trial gripping France
The 71-year-old has admitted inviting strangers into their home to rape her. Most of his co-defendants have pleaded not guilty to rape charges, some claiming they believed Gisèle Pelicot was consenting or that her husband’s consent was sufficient.
‘She sounded in a daze’
Throughout her ordeal, the toll on Gisèle Pelicot’s health did not go unnoticed by doctors and relatives, though they failed to understand its cause. Taking the witness stand on Tuesday, her son-in-law Pierre Peyronnet spoke of the family’s concern about her rapidly deteriorating health and of the difficulty in reaching out to her.
“We found it very difficult to get her on the phone, and most of the time it was [Dominique] who answered, explaining that Gisèle was asleep, even in the middle of the day,” Peyronnet told the court. “It sounded plausible because she did a lot, especially looking after the children,” the 52-year-old said.
When they were finally able to speak to her, she “often spoke incoherently and sounded in a daze”, Peyronnet added, accusing his father-in-law of deliberately misleading them.
“We believed [Dominique Pelicot's] perverse argument that it was our fault that her health was deteriorating,” he said. “We even discussed making her come to see us less often, so that she wouldn’t wear herself out. I now understand that the aim was to keep her under his thumb.”
Gisèle Pelicot consulted a host of doctors over such mystifying symptoms as memory loss and momentary absences, as well as gynecological conditions that included an inflamed cervix. Her husband feigned surprise, taunting her with suggestions she may be having an extra-marital affair.
Consumed by anxiety, Gisèle Pelicot ceased to drive her car or travel alone. Her husband was only caught after three women reported him to the police for trying to use his camera to film up their skirts in a grocery store.
Training doctors to detect ‘chemical submission’
When quizzed about doctors’ failure to piece things together, Joël Pelicot, the brother of the accused, told the court that in medicine, “you only find what you look for – and you only look for what you know”.
In a recent interview with Le Monde, gynaecologist Ghada Hatem, the founder of a pioneering medical facility that caters to women who are vulnerable or victims of abuse, acknowledged that even she knew very little about domestic “chemical submission” before hearing of the Pelicot case.
Since then, special courses on the subject have been set up at the Maison des femmes she founded and at similar facilities, designed to train medical workers to detect the symptoms experienced by victims of drug-facilitated abuse.
In 2022, police registered more than 2,000 complaints involving allegations of “chemical submission”, an increase of 69% on the previous year. However, it is estimated that only 10% of victims lodge a complaint.
The subject made waves in parliament last year when lawmaker Sandrine Josso accused a French senator of spiking her drink with the intent of sexually abusing her. Josso, who led a government-appointed commission on “chemical submission”, told FRANCE 24 last month that she was paying close attention to the Pelicot trial, voicing hopes that it would help raise awareness of what she described as a “blind spot” in the fight against sexual violence.
Gisèle Pelicot, who refused to hold the trial behind closed doors, has herself emerged as a champion of the cause, stating at the start of the proceedings that she would "speak out so that no other woman has to endure chemical submission”.
This article has been translated from the original in French.
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