Monday was the last session of what may be. For two reasons. The first, the case itself. For a decade, between 2011 and 2020, Dominique Pelicot contacted dozens of men via the Internet to invite them to his home, and also to invite them to rape his wife, Gisèle Pelicot, after he drugged her with anxiolytics. There was no money or any type of exchange, he only asked to be able to record the attacks. At least 72 men passed through that house in Mazan, a town in southwest France. The second issue has been the unusual nature of the trial, which Gisèle Pelicot wanted open doors so that, as she said during the first sessions of the trial, shame would change sides.
Faced with the pact of silence of dozens of men for years, protected by the certainty that no one would speak, the conviction of a woman who, when she knew what had happened, and who did not want more silence. Here are some keys to this case that will be sentenced tomorrow, Thursday, November 19.
The trial. It has lasted 15 weeks, it began on Monday, September 2 in Avignon and lasted until this past Monday, December 16. That day, only 16 of them apologized to Gisèle Pelicot; Some still do not recognize what they did even though it was recorded; Dominique Pelicot, who did not deny anything throughout the process, . This Thursday morning the ruling will be known.
The accused. Dominique Pelicot, 71, is the main accused, admits all the facts of which he is accused and faces a sentence of 20 years in prison, the maximum for the crime of rape in France. For 49 of them, the Prosecutor’s Office requests between 10 and 18 years in prison for sexual assault and aggravated rape; For another, he has requested four years in prison for “touching.” And there are, in addition, at least 21 other men who have not been able to be identified.
The profiles. There are none, and it is one of the issues that has been reflected most clearly in this case. Against the idea established in the social imagination about those who commit aggression, there is a reality that collides head-on: . The accused were between 27 and 74 years old, most of them from towns no more than an hour from Mazan – the place where the Pelicots lived and where the rapes took place – and among them was, for example, a coach 69-year-old retired sportsman, a 40-year-old unemployed man, a 54-year-old plumber, a 43-year-old bricklayer or a 27-year-old ex-soldier. Many good children, good parents, good friends, good brothers, good grandparents.
The disciple. Jean-Pierre Maréchal is 63 years old and was the driver of an agricultural cooperative. The French press calls him “the disciple” of Dominique Pelicot because he did not attack the wife of the main accused, Cilia M, 53 years old. They had been married for 30 years and have three children. He and Pelicot photographed her, drugged her with the same anxiolytics that Pelicot used for the rest of the attacks, and raped her at least 12 times.
The monster. It is common when it comes to sexual violence to call the men who perpetrate it monsters, but they are, for the most part, men perfectly integrated into society. , experts, theorists and specialists from all fields insistently explain, blurs precisely one of the bases of this violence: its structurality, its non-exceptionality, its extension. Gisèle Pelicot, when testifying before the police, . And Cilia M., Jean-Pierre Maréchal’s wife, said in court that “he was a wonderful man,” “a very protective father” with whom “everything was always very good.”
Coco. It is the name of the platform where Pelicot found the rest of the attackers; it was active between 2003 and last June, when the French police managed to close it. Like this one, many other online spaces serve every day as a platform, meeting place and contact place for aggressors, among themselves and with their victims. Sexual crimes committed on or through the Internet are increasing in all countries.
The pact of silence. Sexual violence, like many other forms of sexist violence, has historically been maintained through silence. That of the victims, out of fear or shame; the obvious of the perpetrators; and also of those who at some point know that this violence has been exercised. In this case, for a decade, dozens of men were attacking an unconscious woman, they knew that others were doing it, they allowed themselves to be recorded, Dominique Pelicot recorded, and they all knew that none of them were going to betray the rest.
Chemical submission. It is one of the most underestimated forms of sexual violence, but increasingly better known, more studied, analyzed and included in statistics. , that is, someone takes advantage of another person’s voluntary consumption of alcohol or drugs to commit violence. The other, the proactive one, which occurred in the Pelicot case, which consists of drugging someone without their knowledge in order to attack them, is the least common, according to the available data, although as in this case, it occurs sometimes. The issue with the latter is the difficulty sometimes in identifying it. Gisèle Pelicot went to the doctor for years with headaches, memory loss and other symptoms and she never thought that behind all of this there was a network organized by her husband to rape her.
The heroine. Gisèle Pelicot has become not only an icon but also the image of a society that is advancing faster than ever in recent years against sexual violence and other forms of sexist violence. Her decision not to hide, because she doesn’t have to, to open the doors of that trial so that the world could know what had happened and who had perpetrated the violence, has made her the recipient of adjectives and nouns like . It is. But there is another side to this polyhedron that makes up everything that exists around this violence, and that is why it is: and they will work without cracks to protect the victims, not judge them, believe them and not hold them responsible to a greater or lesser degree. their own attacks, women would not have to fight twice, against the violence they have received and against that system and society. In this case it was almost impossible for everything to happen differently because there was evidence, thousands, that proved it. But what would have happened if there had not been a single recording, not a single photo, not a single trace on the Internet?
You are never just a victim. When a rape occurs, the direct victim is the one who suffers it, but the violence always shoots in multiple directions, and so do the consequences. . The daughter and two sons of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, and their grandchildren, are the example in this case. Caroline Darian, of whom nude photos were also found among her father’s material, said she felt “a forgotten victim” of the process because there is nothing to indicate whether or not there was direct, physical violence against her. Florian, 38, the youngest, asked his father in one of the sessions that if he had dignity, he would tell his sister the truth. The eldest, David, 50, said in court that his childhood “had been erased.” Of all the places where violence occurs, the family is the most unknown, most hidden and most protected space.
The phrase. Shame has to change sides has already become one of the slogans against sexual violence, which, however, is more than 40 years old. , the lawyer who handled the Tonglet-Castellano case, also known as the Aix-en-Provence trial – the city where it occurred on May 2 and 3, 1978 – which represented a social, political and legislative rupture around the rape. Anne Tonglet and Araceli Castellano, a Belgian couple, were raped by three men on the night of August 21, 1974 in a cove near Marseille. And, as Gisèle Pelicot has done now, both, pushed by their lawyer, Halimi, wanted the trial to be open so that society, in sexual violence, would look in the right direction: at the aggressors.
