AVIGNON, France (AP) — The trial of dozens of men accused of raping an unconscious woman who was repeatedly drugged by her husband for nearly a decade has highlighted the difficulties that victims of sexual violence can face in France.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, and his 50 co-defendants face up to 20 years in prison if found guilty in a trial that has shocked the world and thrilled the French public.
Pelicot tearfully admitted in court that he was guilty of the charges against him. He said that all his co-defendants knew exactly what they were doing when he invited them to his home in Provence between 2011 and 2020 to have sex with his unconscious and unsuspecting wife. She divorced him after she discovered what he had done to her.
Despite evidence, including meticulously archived photos and videos Pelicot took of the alleged rapes, some of the defendants’ lawyers have probed Gisèle Pelicot’s private life and motives, even questioning whether she was actually unconscious during some of the encounters. While they must defend their clients to the best of their ability, the lawyers’ tactics have infuriated advocates for sexually abused people, who say the lawyers show that victim blaming is alive and well in France.
“This trial is the trial of our society,” Nathan Paris, 27, who works in a youth shelter, said outside the Avignon courthouse this week. Paris, himself a victim of sexual violence, has made the trip from Marseille several times since the trial began.
“The French people have evolved… and I have the feeling that justice has not evolved over time,” he said, promising to keep coming back until the trial is over.
The co-defendants range in age from 20 to 70 and represent a cross-section of French men: there is a firefighter, a journalist, a nurse, a prison guard and a construction worker. Some are retired, others unemployed and many have families of their own. One of them knew he had HIV when he raped Gisèle Pelicot six times and chose not to use a condom, police said. She did not contract HIV, despite being diagnosed with other sexually transmitted diseases, a medical expert testified.
Magali Lafourcade, a judge and general secretary of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights who is not involved in the trial, said the fight against sexual violence in France has improved slightly since the start of the #MeToo movement, which has brought down some of France’s best-known actors and film directors. Women have always spoken, but their voices are now being heard more, she said.
“For a long time, we saw the rape and murder of women by men as something that belonged to the private sphere. We felt that we should not interfere in people’s private lives,” Lafourcade said.
“There has been a marked change, if not a revolution, in this perception since #MeToo,” she added.
According to Lafourcade, civil society groups have lobbied hard in recent years to convince judges, politicians and the media that sexual violence is not just a private matter, but also a social, political and financial matter.
French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to prioritize gender equality and combat violence against women. But French government policy is still lagging behind and more resources and efforts need to be put into tackling sex offenders, experts told The Associated Press.
Lawyers and analysts agree that the Pelicot trial is a slam dunk in many ways, due to the abundance of highly incriminating evidence and the guilty plea of the prime suspect.
Gisèle Pelicot also defies the widespread stereotype in French society that women who are raped provoke their attackers by attracting male gazes or being careless. She is a grandmother in her 70s who was drugged and unconscious when she was attacked, police said.
“Most victims don’t have that,” said Celine Piques, a spokesperson for the feminist group Osez le Féminisme!, or Dare Feminism!, who pointed out that 90 percent of women who say they have been raped don’t press charges because they think they don’t stand a chance. “In most cases, the victims’ words are questioned and the shame falls on them rather than on the man who committed the rape.”
Piques said she was particularly shocked by the questions about Gisèle Pelicot’s sex life, including “whether she liked swinging or threesomes, while this woman was drugged and unconscious.”
Gisèle Pelicot was remarkably calm and stoic during the trial, even during the most horrific and graphic descriptions of the abuse she endured. But she became agitated Wednesday when defense lawyers questioned her about the graphic images taken of her, shown in court for the first time. She had agreed to the showing because she said she hoped they would serve as “irrefutable evidence.”
“I understand why rape victims don’t press charges,” Pelicot told the five judges after a lawyer asked her if she was hiding any unusual sexual “proclivities.”
“I’m not even going to answer this question because I find it insulting,” she replied in a broken voice.
She told the court that the first two weeks of the trial had been heartbreaking, saying: “Since I’ve been in this courtroom I’ve felt humiliated. I’ve been treated like an alcoholic, an accomplice. … I’ve heard it all.”
Pelicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France and is seen as a hero by many victims for giving up her anonymity, making the trial public and appearing openly before the media. She attended every day of the trial, where she sat in a room full of men accused of raping her.
But despite the grisly details that emerged during the trial, it hasn’t stopped some from downplaying the abuse. For example, the mayor of the small community where the Pelicots lived, Mazan, apologized on Thursday for suggesting in a BBC interview that things could have been worse because “there were no children involved” and “no one died.”
According to Lafourcade, such a dismissive attitude is widespread in the French legal system.
“We have a real problem with the way the judiciary deals with sexual offences, which is very painful for victims and has a chilling effect,” she said. “It discourages people from reporting.”
Given that so few cases are reported and those that do occur rarely result in convictions, only a small proportion of attackers actually end up in prison, Lafourcade said.
“And to reduce a crime, it’s not the severity of the punishment that counts,” she added. “It’s the fact that you know for sure that you’re going to get caught.”
Pelicot’s supporters believe she is making a difference by courageously confronting the men accused of raping her and that broader change is coming.
“In the past, we would never question a lawyer and his line of defense,” said Paris, the youth shelter worker. “But today, society is changing, people are paying attention to what is happening and are sensitive to the suffering of others.”
