Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman who has become a feminist hero after insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and 50 other men should be held in public, has said she was honoured to wear a scarf to court each day that was sent to her by an Australian organisation working to raise awareness of sexual assaults on older women.
“I’m very honoured to wear it,” Pelicot said on leaving the court in Avignon, which has heard how her then husband, Dominique Pelicot, crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and invited dozens of men to rape her over a nine-year period from 2011 to 2020 in the village of Mazan in Provence.
Stéphane Babonneau, Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyer, said: “She was very touched to receive the scarf and see that on the issue of violence against women, even in Australia on the other side of the world, women feel the same way, and that there is a connection that unites women across the world in standing up against violence against women, and particularly sexual violence.”
Yumi Lee of the Australian Older Women’s Network told the Guardian she had sent the scarf in solidarity. “If we could be there, we would hold up placards with ‘We believe you, Gisèle’ and ‘You are our champion’ – that’s what we would write,” she said.
In court on Wednesday, Gisèle Pelicot reached for the scarf and clutched it during testimony by Romain V, a 63-year-old former forklift truck-driver who is accused of raping her on six occasions over six months between 2019 and 2020 while she was unconscious on her bed.
Romain V denied rape, saying that “her husband invited me in” and a husband’s consent was enough. He denied knowing she was drugged despite video evidence showing him smiling as she snored loudly. He said he went to the Pelicots’ home at the time of the first alleged rape because: “I felt lonely. Christmas was approaching and I was going to be on my own again. I was looking for friendship.”
Romain V told the court he had known he was HIV positive at the time of the alleged rapes and had not worn a condom. The court heard that because he was on HIV treatment since his diagnosis in 2004, he had an undetectable viral load, which was regularly tested, and he could not transmit the virus. “I knew I wasn’t contagious,” he said. His lawyer said medical documents confirmed this.
Romain V told the court that later, in 2023, he found out he had syphilis after he was tested as part of the police investigation. During the decade of abuse, Gisèle Pelicot contracted several sexually transmitted diseases which will have a lifelong impact, but not HIV.
The court heard that Romain V had been subjected to extreme physical violence and abuse by his parents and was raped by a priest as a child.
Gisèle Pelicot, 72, a former logistics manager, has told the court she insisted on a public trial because: “I wanted all woman victims of rape … to say: ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, we can do it too.’ When you’re raped there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.”
She had received testimony from women across the world, including in Europe, the US, the UK and Brazil, her lawyer said. “It’s something that has really touched her and shows this connection that unites all women.”
Lee said she and the other members of the Australian Older Women’s Network collected donations among themselves to send the silk scarf, crafted by First Nations women, to Pelicot. “We hope that when she wears it, she knows that she has the backing and solidarity of women who are thousands of kilometres from the courtroom,” said Lee, who said the world was watching as Gisèle Pelicot recast concepts such as shame, sexual violence and consent. “What she has done is help us to take a big step to change the status quo.”
Lee added: “She’s a champion. We hope that once the trial is over, she will be able to feel the sun on her skin and know that she is treasured by many, many women around the world.”
