It is one of the strong moments of the trial that began at the beginning of September in France. Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who was victim of fifty men with whom her husband contacted online offering to rape her while she was sedated, reacted this Wednesday to what was said in court. “The rapist can also be within your family, your friends,” he warned, in his second statement since the hearings began. “I am a totally destroyed woman and I don’t know how I am going to get back on my feet,” she said during her speech.
Throughout her statement, she addressed her ex-husband, the main accused, directly for the first time. “How could you betray me like that? “Let these strangers enter our room?” the 71-year-old woman asked him, without looking him in the face. “I have always tried to guide you towards the light, upward, but you have chosen the depths of the human soul,” he reproached him. Over a decade, from 2011 to 2020, Pelicot was drugged by her ex-husband Dominique and raped by more than 50 men contacted through the internet. “Today, in this room, I still do not understand how this man, this perfect man, could come to this,” he added.
Gisèle Pelicot arrived in the morning at the Avignon court, in the south of France, where the trial is being held, surrounded by the applause of the public. “They tell me that I have courage. It is not bravery, it is will and determination to make this society evolve,” he said. The woman has attended almost all of the trial hearings and has acknowledged that she endures thanks to “all these men and women who are behind” her in support.
Before the process began, on September 2, he decided that all hearings would be public, authorizing access to the press so that they could narrate what happened in the room. Her lawyer, at that time, stated that she had decided to open the trial to the public so that “shame could change sides.” In recent weeks, the phrase has appeared in demonstrations called in support of it and on posters that feminist groups have posted on city walls.
Pelicot has said he does not regret his decision. When he took it, he was “conscious that he should not be ashamed.” “That he couldn’t blame me for anything,” he added, according to the local press. “When I decided not to do it behind closed doors, I wanted all women victims of rape to be able to say ‘Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can do it,’” she continued.
During the ten years that the attacks lasted, Pelicot suffered memory loss, alopecia and depression. None of the doctors who visited her were able to detect what was happening. She was unconscious when they raped her and did not know what was happening. She found out after the police arrested her husband for another reason and found videos that proved the sexual assaults. Fifty defendants are sitting in the dock today, including her ex-husband.
The trial, which began on September 2, is expected to last until December 20. During the hearings, Pelicot recalled, the testimonies of the relatives of the accused were heard. “I have seen women, mothers and sisters say that a son, a brother or a husband were exceptional men. “I also had it at home,” he said. “The rapist can also be within your family, your friends,” he warned.
The Mazan rape case, as the trial is known, has shaken France and opened the debate on the need to incorporate the notion of explicit consent in the definition of rape. The Minister of Justice, the former socialist Didier Migaud, has declared himself in favor of modifying the rule. During the hearings, some of the defendants have expressed doubts about what the word means and whether the victim was actually sedated and not participating in a paraphilic game. None of them found it necessary to receive any kind of consent from Gisèle before the events.
Currently, article 222-23 of the French Penal Code defines rape as “any act of sexual penetration, whatever its nature, or any oral-genital act committed on the person of another or on the person of the perpetrator by violence.” , coercion, threat or surprise.” The notion of consent is not explicitly mentioned in the text. In Spain, what is known as the law of only yes is yes introduced in 2022 the obligation of explicit sexual consent.
Gisèle’s statement comes five days after her ex-husband, with whom she shared 50 years of common life, was summoned again last Friday. The president of the court, Roger Arata, questioned him for several hours during which the retiree described in detail his modus operandi. When preparing dinner, the man, the main defendant in the trial, placed a powerful anxiolytic in his ex-wife’s food. To ensure that he did not wake up during the rapes, Pelicot previously spoke to a nurse online, who would have told him how many pills were necessary.
“Specifically, how did you do it?” the president of the court asked him. “They were doses prepared in advance, depending on the appointment,” answered the 71-year-old man, according to the testimony collected by Franceinfo. “I cooked. Sometimes (she) had suspicions. But most of the time it was easy,” he said. During the hearing, the retiree also admitted that he undressed his ex-wife “according to each person’s wishes.”
