The piece contains descriptions of sexual assault.
I recently met with a friend, a fellow journalist, who had just returned from Avignon, where she was covering the trial of Dominique Pelicot and the 50 other men he is accused of inviting to rape his wife Gisèle after having secretly sedated her. The most sinister thing about being there, the journalist told me, was that she never knew whether the men milling around her outside the courtyard were the press, members of the judiciary, administrative staff, part of the crowds who turned out each day to support Gisèle Pelicot or, you know, them.
Was the man beside her a prison warden monitoring the 18 accused who are being held in custody, or the prison guard who has admitted to raping Gisèle inside her home in November 2019? Was he a reporter covering the trial, or the local journalist who said he had taken Dominique’s word that the sleeping woman he is shown on video raping had consented, and on whose laptop police found thousands of images of child sex abuse? Was he an IT technician making sure the systems in the courtroom weren’t overloaded by the hundreds of TV cameras set up to cover the trial, or the computer expert who asked Dominique to let him know when Gisèle was fully sedated because the car journey from his home to theirs would take him 20 minutes?
I have been thinking about what my friend told me in the weeks since we met, wondering why this small detail — taken from an enormous, unprecedented trial that has laid bare some of the most horrific accounts of mass rape this country has ever heard — bothered me so much. Then I realised. The discomfort she felt in that foyer in Avignon, not knowing which of the men around her had raped an unconscious woman, is not exceptional. Rather, it is an accurate representation of the world we live in.
To put it another way: we are all in that courtroom, all the time.
There are more than 400 rapes or attempted rapes every day in France, a country where the vast majority of sexual assault charges are dropped, and where survivors are often sued for defamation if they speak out about what happened to them. This is a nation where rape is a given and rapists are hidden by design.
In fact what is truly exceptional about the Mazan rape trial is that it is happening at all. In France, 94% of rape cases are abandoned by prosecutors before a trial can taken place, a figure that only accounts for the 6% of sexual assaults that are reported to the police in the first place. If Dominique Pelicot and his co-accused are convicted, they will be in the significant minority of rapists. The underreporting of sexual violence makes it hard to estimate how many rapists are actually condemned for their crimes, but we know that only 15% of the tiny number of cases that are registered by police result in a conviction. The accused in the Mazan rape trial acted with impunity because they live in a world that tells them they have it.
What will it take to change this status quo, which so drastically favours the rapist over the victim? The answer may be Gisèle Pelicot herself. Over the long months of this devastating trial, this 72-year-old former logistics manager has become one of the most effective feminist communicators the world has ever seen.
We did not want to look at the Mazan rape trial. When the facts were first revealed, the number of alleged perpetrators, the depravity of it, the enormous reach of it seemed too grotesque to even consider. We turned away.
Paradoxically, the very ordinariness of the crimes made it equally hard to bear. We are most at risk of sexual violence from someone we know, and so it was for Gisèle Pelicot, whose husband is accused of orchestrating her mass rape. The most dangerous place for a woman is inside her own home, and so it was for Gisèle Pelicot.
There is no single profile of a perpetrator, and so the accused represent a crosssection of the society we live in: young, old, employed, unemployed, single, married. Firefighters, pharmacists, shopkeepers, lorry drivers, business owners, plumbers, delivery drivers. Thirty-seven fathers are on trial for the rape of Gisèle Pelicot. There are no monsters, only our neighbours, our families, our communities. It is easier to get through the day if we do not think about these things, though we know them to be true.
Many of us avoided the news because we didn’t want to hear about what had happened to Gisèle Pelicot. But Gisèle Pelicot wanted us to pay attention. Would she have a closed trial? She would not. Would she change her name to distance herself from her husband? She would not. Would she block the videos of her rapes being shown in court? She would not.
Gisèle Pelicot will always be remembered for the phrase she has repeated throughout this arduous trial: “the shame must change sides”. And by asking for an open trial, she showed that processes that purport to protect victims of sexual violence can actually harm them by hiding the pernicious banality of rape. It is one thing to say that victims of sexual violence should not be ashamed, and that perpetrators should be. It is quite another to prove that by allowing videos of that violence to be shown to the world’s media, and to sit in the same courtroom while it happens. Gisèle Pelicot did not just say that the shame should change sides; she flipped the script herself, and she gave permission to others to do the same.
“I want victims of rapes to tell themselves, ‘If Ms. Pelicot did it, so can we,’” she told the court.
Her message is cutting through. Data from the polling group Ifop reveals that three-quarters of French people believe the trial has revealed how normalised and widespread sexual violence is in France. One of the biggest challenges of feminism is to encourage men to reflect on their behaviour and the advantages patriarchy bestows upon them. According to Ifop, more than half of male respondents agreed that all men bear some responsibility or guilt for cases of sexual violence in light of the Pelicot case.
This turnaround in attitudes is all the more remarkable given the notoriously lukewarm reaction to #MeToo in France. In 2018, one hundred French women signed a public letter denouncing the perceived excesses of the 21st century’s largest mobilisation against sexual violence. After #MeToo, many women have shared their experiences, knowing that speaking out against sexual violence and incest will lead to some people believing them — usually feminists — but at least as many accusing them of lying, of jealousy, of improper motives. Some have been sued for speaking up. This is the case for women who come forward with accounts of sexual violence all over the world. Australia is no exception, as the treatment of Brittany Higgins has shown.
It is no overstatement to say that Gisèle Pelicot, who has suffered more than many of us could imagine, has used her suffering to change the world for the better. She turned what could have been an unedifying media circus into a masterclass of ordinary dignity that carries a powerful and subversive feminist message. She has shed light on a culture of normalised sexual abuse that has traditionally been minimised and recategorised as a national commitment to flirting and love.
In Avignon, she told the court: “It’s true that I hear lots of women and men, who say, ‘You’re very brave.’ I say, ‘It’s not bravery, it’s will and determination to change society.’”
Against the odds, she has done it.
If you or someone you know is affected by sexual assault or violence, call 1800RESPECT on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800RESPECT.org.au. In an emergency, call 000.
For counselling, advice and support for men in NSW, Victoria and Tasmania who have anger, relationship or parenting issues, call the Men’s Referral Service on 1300 766 491. Men in WA can contact the Men’s Domestic Violence Helpline on 1800 000 599.
This is an edited excerpt of a longer piece published in Impact, a newsletter of international feminist journalism. You can subscribe here.
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