A woman of heroic strength and dignity
Published by The i paper (16th December, 2024)
It was just another ordinary November day in the life of an ordinary retired couple in an ordinary village in France as they chatted over breakfast about their plans. They were in their late sixties, married for half a century with three children. Friends saw them as a perfect pairing. They had moved from a commuter town near Paris to a peaceful cul-de-sac in Provence almost a decade earlier to enjoy swimming in the pool at their yellow-painted home, playing with their grandchildren in the garden and hiking in the surrounding hills.
Yet, Gisele Pelicot’s contented life was shattered later that day when police revealed her husband Dominique had repeatedly drugged her, invited dozens of men into their house and filmed them raping her.
The assaults took place on their marital bed, in their daughter’s room and on the dining table. On her birthday, Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve. And they were responsible for the strange health problems and exhaustion that left her tormented by thoughts of cancer, dementia or insanity. “My whole world, everything I had built in 50 years was collapsing,” she said later of that chilling moment when she discovered the man she had met as a teenager, married aged 20 and thought she knew had “sacrificed” her “on the altar of vice”.
After arresting the retired electrician for upskirting, police discovered 20,000 graphic images and videos documented in digital files, showing at least 200 alleged rapes. Dominique had been spiking her food and drink since at least 2011, recruiting other men online to assault her, including one who was HIV positive and visited six times.
These sordid details of abuse and degradation in a pretty Provencal village sent shock waves through France. For Gisele, a 72-year-old grandmother put through unimaginable hell by her husband, turned out to be a woman of astonishing strength who fought back against grotesque brutality with courage and dignity.
She went public on her plight, showing heroic sang-froid in face of horror as she forced the court to show the crimes against her in an effort to ensure other women do not endure similar agonies. “I’m expressing myself here not with anger or my hatred but with a will for society to change,” she stated.
No wonder Gisele has become feminist icon and global inspiration, cheered daily by other women outside the Avignon courtroom. This week, the trial of her former husband and 50 other men comes to conclusion – and as she argues, it is rapists who should feel shame, not their victim.
This case shines disturbing light into the dark side of male sexuality in a world where most women know their safety is often flimsy. It exposes how society does too little to protect women, the justice system often fails to support them and France remains a land trapped in the past by sleazy fantasies of libertine seduction that disempower half the population.
Yet, the case sends shivers of fear and recognition far beyond French borders. It holds significance for Britain, a country with minimal retribution for rapists due to a floundering criminal justice system that all too often intensifies trauma for victims. Charges are brought in barely one in 25 cases recorded by police – and fewer than one in six female rape victims report offences. Meanwhile, voters in the United States just elected as president a misogynist who bragged about the exploitative power of fame over women and was found liable in court for sexual assault.
Those grim deeds taking place behind cypress trees in a Provencal village should spark fresh concern over the pernicious influence of pornography as it normalises abusive behaviour in a digital world with unfettered technology.
Dominique learned how to send his wife into deep sleep on the internet, then invited other warped men to rape her while sedated though an unmoderated forum called À son insu (Without her knowledge). French prosecutors have implicated the site in thousands of cases of abuse, violence and criminal activities – yet its owners could never be held liable.
An official French inquiry last year found up to 90 per cent of online pornography showed verbal, physical and sexual violence that often broke the law. “The women are real, the sexual acts and the violence is real, the suffering is often perfectly visible and at the same time eroticised,” reported the equalities watchdog.
Another looming case sees 17 men charged with gang rape and human trafficking to create violent footage with one victim raped 240 times. The Children’s Commissioner in England has warned about normalisation of violence in online pornography with even pre-teens frequently exposed. And a corrosive culture of hypermasculinity that objectifies women as inferior beings has exploded on social media, grabbing the attention of insecure men.
Dominique Pelicot is a sadistic monster. Yet among many shocking aspects of this trial is the dreary ordinariness of the men facing charges with him – and how so many came from within a 30-mile radius to have sex on camera with his unconscious wife. There is the plumber, married to his childhood sweetheart for three decades. The carer with a disabled son. The father of four who fled Vietnam. The baker, the butcher, the firefighter, the journalist, the lorry driver, the young soldier.
They attacked a woman who turned out to be far from ordinary in her response to atrocities, turning something that might have destroyed her into strength.
Gisele Pelicot says people see this tough facade but “behind it lies a field of ruins”. Yet she feels almost lucky since there is firm evidence of the crimes – for as she says, this is rarely the case for women who are raped and must then endure the ordeal of facing their attackers in court. This is why her stand has such power in forcing society to face up to its failures – and why she is my hero of this year.
Categorised in: Crime, Europe, France, home page, Public policy