The nearly three-month trial of 51 of Gisèle Pelicot's abusers has concluded. “Rape culture” is also commonly derided. But why do victims of violence have to constantly defend themselves in court?
Stefan Brändle, Paris/ch media
When the first reports came in early September, people thought they had heard wrong: a trial was taking place in Avignon against a blameless husband who had repeatedly drugged his wife Giselle P. over many years. and made her available to dozens of men for rape via the Internet. chat room. Unbelievable, unbelievable.
Courtroom drawing by defendant Dominic Pellicott.Image: trapezoid
But the habituation effect does work. French media reported live every day; 140 members of the press were also accredited abroad, many of whom could no longer even enter the packed courtroom. This time, it was also the first surprise of the monster trial: not only did 71-year-old Giselle Pellicot's full name appear; she even wanted the proceedings to be made public.
She also wanted to show thousands of photos and videos her husband had made, neatly titled (for example: “Third Sodomy” or “Jacques Fingered”). Why? “Shame must change sides,” the brave Frenchwoman declared with great determination. She wants to show the many rape victims that even 50 defendants can go to court.
Gisèle Pelicot (brown hair), center of the photo, was in Avignon this week, accompanied by her lawyer Stephane Babonneau (in white shirt).Image: trapezoid
Overnight a national hero, her demands for full transparency even trumped the president of the court, Roger Arara, who wanted at least the most objectionable videos to be withheld from the public out of moral sense. In one excerpt, Dominic Pellicott and a male “guest” attack his fully drugged wife; he films the violence with his right hand and hands a Kleenex to the ejaculating stranger next to him with his left.
Then came another surprise: Dominique Pelicot, 71, admitted all the charges at the first trial. “I'm a rapist,” he says, and you think that's the end of it for him. The Paris media dubbed him an “XXL pervert” for the understatement that he cooked for his wife of more than 40 years with three children and poured sleeping pills into the food.
“She was sometimes surprised, but usually it was relatively easy.” That night, he and another man raped her; while the effects of the high-dose powder wore on, he washed his wife's belly, dressed her in pajamas, and removed all traces.
“This seems weird to me”
According to visual evidence, he repeated the scene hundreds of times from 2011 to 2020, using 70 men. Fifty of them have been identified and charged: men aged between 26 and 70, from all professions and classes, most from the surrounding area. Some people knew each other but did not know that they visited the same-sex portal called coco.fr. The final defendant, named Philippe L., was on the channel looking for “a flirtatious woman.”
Contacted by Dominique Pellicott, he visited his villa in the Provence town of Mazan. “The motionless woman on the bed in the bedroom was strange to me but I didn't ask any questions,” the 62-year-old told the court. He defended the fact that he abused the woman without her consent: “I lost touch with my brain.”
When he walked into Pellicott's bedroom, another truck driver, a soldier, a computer scientist, a reporter and an electrician were all surprised: “Your wife, it's like she's dead.” But he continued. The psychiatrists explained that these rapists were not sick and were not necessarily “dangerous.” Many had been sexually abused as children, lived alone, drank heavily and were attracted to Dominic Pellicott.
Demonstrations against the trial in Paris in September.Image: trapezoid
Her female form speaks volumes. Didier S. explained why the lifeless woman lying on the bed did not particularly bother him: “This is his house, his room, his bed, his wife.” Another People say, “He did whatever he wanted to her.”
Over the course of the nearly three-month trial, it has become clear what Giselle Pellicot said at the start of her trial: without deep-rooted “masculinity and patriarchy” she was unaware of the horrors The journey is impossible, and this “machismo and patriarchy” may be even stronger. More in the south of France than in the north.
Defender's role questionable
Defense attorneys for the 51 defendants were also more willing to attack rape victims than to make arguments for their clients. When the trial began, they suspected that Gisele Pellico hadn't noticed anything. This angle of attack is still defensible: if Gisele Pellico was in any way involved in sex games, the rape charge would be invalid.
During the trial, eloquent lawyer Nadia El-Brumi also accused Gisele Pellico of continuing to be at the mercy of her dominant husband and remaining “under his control” in court “. This is just “victim blaming,” a frontal attack on the victim. The fact that this operation was conducted primarily by women—the defense attorneys for the defendants—seems deeply contradictory.
Giselle Pellicot, in particular, is represented by men. Stéphane Babonneau, one of Giselle Pellicot's two lawyers, put the trial into a wider context: “This case is an example of rape culture. I hope that through this process, It can change the deep-rooted concept in men’s self-image that the female body is an object of conquest.”
Feminists draw an analogy to another “historical” process in 1978 in Aix-en-Provence. A rejected man raped two women with two accomplices; a mediated trial has resulted in France significantly tightening the criminalization of rape.
The Avignon trial is already having repercussions: France's National Assembly members are pursuing a change in the law that, like Spain's, would require explicit consent (“only consent is certain”) for sex – otherwise it is rape . Any kind of anesthesia should also make the punishment more severe. It’s the “highest form of domination” over the body, says new feminist icon Gisèle Pelicot. (aargauerzeitung.ch)
