Rapist received a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for drugging his then-wife Gisèle for a decade to rape her along with dozens of strangers; trial that paralyzed the world found 51 defendants guilty
Decision
The Justice of This Thursday (19) sentenced Dominique Pelicot to the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison for drugging his then-wife Gisèle for a decade to rape her alongside dozens of strangers. The five magistrates of the court in Avignon, southern France, thus followed the Public Prosecutor’s request for a sentence in this major rape trial, in which the 51 defendants were found guilty.
Case
The rapes committed by strangers and planned by her husband could have destroyed her, but Frenchwoman Gisèle Pelicot decided to face her attackers in court to demand that “shame change sides” and became a global feminist icon. In September, when the trial against her now ex-husband and 50 other defendants began in Avignon, southern France, journalists saw a woman with short red hair hiding behind sunglasses.
The victim was a grandmother whose life partner of half a century admitted that he drugged her between 2011 and 2020 to render her unconscious and rape her, alongside dozens of unknown men he contacted online. But Gisèle waived her right to anonymity and demanded a public access permit for the trial to raise awareness about chemical submission, the use of drugs to commit sexual assault.
The 72-year-old woman won the heart of France and, what’s more, sparked a wave of artwork in her honor, after claiming that her attackers, not her, were the ones who should feel ashamed. “I wanted every woman who was a victim of rape to say, ‘If Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can do it,’” she said in October. “I don’t want (the victims) to feel more shame, but the attackers do,” he added.
The trial was accompanied by demonstrations of support in France, where several people began applauding her and offering flowers as she arrived at the court. And, little by little, Gisèle Pelicot took off her sunglasses.
“A rape is a rape”
In December, the British broadcaster BBC included her in the list of 100 female personalities of the year, alongside serial rape survivor and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nadia Murad and Brazilian gymnast Rebeca Andrade. Gisèle obtained a divorce from her husband Dominique Pelicot in August. The 72-year-old admitted to the sexual assaults, which he meticulously documented for years with photos and videos.
His ex-wife moved away from Mazan, the city in southern France where most of the rapes took place and where she was treated like “a piece of meat”, a “rag doll” in her home, in her own words. She now uses her maiden surname, but during the trial she asked the press to use her married surname, which she passed on to some of her seven grandchildren.
In mid-September, Gisèle abandoned her usual reserve to express her anger at the humiliation she felt when several lawyers insinuated possible complicity. “A rape is a rape,” he replied. During the trial, she called on the “macho and patriarchal” society to change its attitude towards rape and spoke of her outrage that none of her attackers had alerted the police. Some raped her up to six times. Some defendants defended themselves by claiming that they believed they were participating in a fantasy of a libertine couple, as they had the husband’s consent, an example of their “cowardice”, in the victim’s opinion.
Memory lapses
Some defendants admitted to the rapes. But another 20 suspects remain free because investigators were unable to identify them before the macro trial. The military daughter was born in Villingen, in southwest Germany, on December 7, 1952 and moved to France at the age of five. When he was nine years old, his mother died of cancer at just 35 years old.
When her brother Michel died of a heart attack in 1971, at the age of 43, she had not yet turned 20. In the same year, she met Dominique Pelicot, her future husband and sexual attacker. Her dream was to be a hairdresser, but she took a typing course. After a few years of temporary work, Gisèle developed her entire career at the French electrical group EDF, where she ended up responsible for a logistics department for nuclear power plants.
At home, she took care of her three children and then her seven grandchildren. When she retired, she enjoyed walking and singing in a local choir. Only when police caught her ex-husband filming up a woman’s skirts at a mall in 2020 did she discover the reason for her troubling memory lapses.
*With information from AFP
Posted by Victor Oliveira
