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A new type of graffiti has recently started appearing on walls in cities across France: paintings depicting a straight-backed woman with an auburn bob wearing a pair of dark sunglasses like a form of armour.
It is Gisèle Pelicot, the 71-year-old at the centre of a rape trial that has shocked and moved the public, not only in France, but around the world. Her (now former) husband of five decades has admitted to drugging and raping her and recruiting 50 other men to do so over a period of years.
Despite the trauma she has experienced, Pelicot, who this week made her closing statement in court, has become a heroine and feminist champion since the trial began in September. She refused the anonymous, closed-door trial offered to alleged rape victims in France. Instead, she threw it open to the public to expose the crimes committed by her husband — documented in macabre videos of the rapes — with the aim of giving women the courage to come forward.
“It is not for us to feel ashamed, it is for them,” she told the court, referring to rape victims and perpetrators. “I am expressing myself here not with my anger nor my hatred, but with my will for society to change.”
Pelicot has already accomplished much: 85 per cent of those polled in France by Ifop said the trial should lead everyone, especially men, to do more to fight sexual violence, and a large majority also said the proceedings made them reconsider society’s and their own views on such crimes. Extensive media coverage has helped debunk misconceptions — rape is not usually committed by strangers, it can occur in a marriage, and delays in reporting to police do not indicate weak accusations.
A debate has also been rekindled among lawyers and politicians over whether France should revamp the legal definition of rape to include affirmative consent. Currently the notion of consent is not explicitly mentioned in the law, which can complicate rape cases where women freeze or do not speak during an attack, according to lawyer Anne-Claire Le Jeune, who represented French victims in the Jeffrey Epstein case. “The goal is to protect the victim as much as possible,” she said.
A wave of consent-based “only yes means yes” laws has swept over Europe with 20 jurisdictions — including Spain, Germany and Sweden — adopting them since the #MeToo movement began in 2017, according to a paper by Swedish academics published last year. In France there has been resistance, with lawyers opposed to the change arguing that it is not needed and proponents insisting it would shift the responsibility to prove consent from the victim to the perpetrator.
The French justice minister said in late September he supported changing the law, although it remains to be seen if and when that will happen.
Before Pelicot’s life was upturned, she lived in the small village of Mazan in southern France with her husband Dominique. They were enjoying retirement after careers as a logistics manager and estate agent respectively. They had three adult children and multiple grandchildren.
It all fell apart in 2020 when Dominique was arrested for having surreptitiously filmed under a woman’s skirt in a supermarket. Police investigated and found a computer holding multiple videos of sessions in which he sedated his wife and offered her up to strangers in their bedroom.
When police told Gisèle Pelicot of their discovery, she said she had no memory of the incidents. “My world is collapsing, for me, everything is falling apart, everything I had built in 50 years,” she told the court of that moment.
She refused to watch the videos initially, only doing so shortly before the trial on the advice of her lawyers. “Frankly these are horror scenes for me,” she said. She overcame such feelings to allow her lawyers to press for the videos to be shown publicly as evidence. The judge initially disagreed before changing his mind.
An astonishing 35 of the defendants said they had not raped Pelicot, despite videos showing that she was clearly unconscious, sometimes even snoring. The men represent a cross-section of society, aged between 26 and 74, of different races and levels of education. They included a fireman, a journalist and a soldier, as well as retirees and the unemployed. Some hid behind hats and scarves when entering the courthouse.
Their lawyers argued that they were not guilty because they had no intent to rape and assumed that Pelicot had accepted a “libertine game” piloted by her husband. Defendants said they believed that he had consented for her.
To support Pelicot, feminist groups have held rallies all over the country, while women have turned up in force to bear witness at the court in Avignon. Blandine Deverlanges, a high school teacher who founded a local feminist group, was among those who started a ritual of clapping for Pelicot as she came and went to express their “admiration, gratitude and respect”.
“I find that she has presence, dignity and is standing tall,” said Deverlanges.
Pelicot has been largely stoic during the trial, but when she rose to speak for the final time on Tuesday, rage came through. “This is the trial of cowardice,” she said. “The scar will never heal.”
Yet when she was asked why she has kept the surname of her ex-husband, determination replaced anger. “I have grandchildren who are named Pelicot. I want them to be proud.”
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