Gisèle Pélicot’s courage will do more to bring attention to rape globally than the court systems of many countries ever will.
At 71, it’s a role she never could have anticipated as the victim of hundreds of alleged crimes, organised by the man she was married to for fifty years.
But by bravely deciding to make her name public in the trial of 51 men who are alleged to have committed heinous crimes against her, Pélicot’s name will forever be associated with what these men did to her, but more so as a woman who gave up her anonymity to bring attention to how drugs, technology and secret surveillance are used in rape.
Now, for the past week, Gisèle has walked in and out of the courthouse in Avignon, France. Wearing dark sunglasses and with her lawyer by her side, she has her head held high and waves and nods to the growing group of supporters gathered outside.
Her daily appearances come in strark contrast to some of the co-accused who wear masks and other clothing to try and conceal their identities. They are the “degenerates,” as Gisèle described them, for whom “forgiveness does not exist”.
Gisèle could have accepted her right to remain anonymous and protect her identity at the centre of the 20,000 images and videos that are evidence in the trial, showing exactly what her former husband and the more than 80 men did to her.
But she chose to make the trial public, knowing that doing so would bring far more attention to the case, the accused rapists, and the issues at the heart of what went on for over a decade in her home.
While 51 men are on trial, including her former husband who admitted in court on Tuesday that he drugged, raped and recruited men to rape his wife, authorities are still seeking to identify another 30 men who were also successfully recruited to take part via a chatroom called ‘Against Her Knowledge’.
Now, the “ordinary men” who raped her – with their “ordinary” jobs and “ordinary” families – face up to twenty years in prison and find themselves at the centre of a global story, having likely once thought they could escape any sort of justice for their deplorable decisions. Some live in the same small town as Gisèle, and others in the surrounding areas. They work as civil servants, journalists, police officers, nurses and firefighters.
Some of the shock surrounding this trial centres around how so many “ordinary” men could allegedly commit such horrific crimes, reflecting myths that a rapist can somehow be easily identified, that a victim is a certain age and that rape crimes have specific characteristics.
What’s more challenging is to consider the 50 year difference between the youngest accused rapist in his twenties and the oldest in his seventies – demonstrating engrained ideas about dehumanising women that cross generations. Also disturbing is the use of technology as a tool for recruitment and further dehumanisation of the victim, as well as the notions that a husband’s consent to commit such degrading acts against his wife somehow made participating acceptable.
Indeed, some of the accused are contesting the rape accusations by claiming they believed the husband’s consent was enough. Others claim the husband led them into thinking his wife had consented.
The list of men involved is so long that their names will be difficult to remember globally, should such names ever be officially released. But their families and communities will know just what the “ordinary men” they thought they knew were a part of.
Not one of these men stepped forward to share what was going on upon learning Gisèle Pélicot was being drugged by her husband so he and other men could rape her while she was unconscious. Instead, they allegedly went ahead and took part in the heinous crimes.
Despite dozens of men allegedly entering Gisèle’s home and no doubt even more seeing what was on offer via the chatroom, the crimes only became known after her former husband was caught by a security guard filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket, leading investigators to discover a USB drive labelled “abuses”, featuring videos and images of his then wife being raped up to 100 times.
“I am a rapist, like the others in this room,” Dominique Pelicot told the court room on Tuesday, the first time he’s spoken at length since the started on September 2.
And Gisèle Pélicot is a survivor.
Dominque Pelicot cried in the courtroom asking for forgiveness, which he will not receive.
Gisèle told the courtroom on Wednesday, “These men are degenerates. They committed rape.”
“When they see a woman sleeping on her bed, no one thought to ask themselves a question? They don’t have brains? Forgiveness doesn’t not exist.”
Gisèle was also stern in response to evidence presented by lawyers of the defendants.
“I have felt humiliated while I’ve been in this courtroom. I have been called an alcoholic, a conspirator of Mr. Pelicot,” she said.
Outside the courtrooms, as thousands of people demonstrated across thirty cities in France over the weekend demanding an end to rape, holding placards with messages like “Gisèle for all. All for Gisèle” a courageous Gisèle has turned the attention to others.
“Thanks to you I have the strength to see this fight through to the end,” she told demonstrators this week, according to an English translation of news site La Provence.
“I dedicate [this fight] to all the people, women and men, throughout the world, who are victims of sexual violence. To all these victims, I want to say to them today, Look around you. You are not alone.”