Gisèle Pélicot learned she was a victim only when police presented her with the evidence. The 71-year-old French woman, who had been losing hair, weight and memory in recent years – friends and neighbours feared an Alzheimer’s diagnosis – was phoned by a member of local police to bear witness to a series of photos and videos found on her husband’s laptop.
The device, which had been seized after a security guard allegedly caught Ms Pélicot’s ex-husband, Dominique Pélicot, attempting to take so-called “upskirt” photographs of women in a supermarket, revealed content which spanned a decade; all featuring her at the centre; unconscious; unclothed; and being assaulted by dozens of men.
The horrifying truth became clear: Pélicot’s husband of 50 years, the man she regarded as the love of her life, had been drugging his wife – sometimes crushing sleeping pills into her food; other times, her drink – to get her into a comatose state, before inviting men over to join him in raping her.
Pélicot, who has no memory of the assaults, will see many of them play out in court, in the course of a trial that had originally been expected to run until December 20th. Her symptoms, which she was terrified were the early warnings of a brain tumour, had been a result of the pills used by her then husband.
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The numbers involved in the case, which began in Avignon two weeks ago, tell their own story: nine years; 200 alleged rapes; 90 men, including 51 who are identifiable.
Eighteen of the 51 accused are in custody. This includes Pélicot’s former husband, also 71, who has already admitted to mixing sleeping pills into her food and drink and bringing men into their bedroom to join him in raping her.
On Thursday, the trial was adjourned until Monday after Dominique Pélicot was excused from attending in light of his deteriorating health – he had been due to testify on Tuesday afternoon but was excused from court with abdominal pain. Should he be unavailable to attend proceedings for a lengthy period, the trial will be postponed to a later date, the presiding judge, Roger Arata, warned on Thursday.
In court, his defence so far has relied on presenting him as a Jekyll and Hyde type character, calling up psychologists to reinforce the idea that he was the victim of split personality disorder – a “man with two faces”, “very caring and much-loved grandfather by day”, and a rapist at night.
Some media picked up on the theme. Several pieces featured the words “Jekyll and Hyde” in the headline. There were statements from some of the other accused – who include soldiers, firemen, and an IT expert – many of whom say that they are “good husbands” and victims, too. Many have pleaded not guilty, some insisting they were “tricked” into thinking they were taking part in a threesome, and told she was only pretending to sleep.
This Jekyll-and-Hyde defence bears more than a passing resemblance to the well-worn “good-man-who-snapped” trope used so often to explain violent crimes against women. It at once trivialises the crimes carried out against the victim and manages to twist the narrative, so that the perpetrator is almost portrayed as a victim himself.
It diminishes the victim entirely – as though they have not already been diminished by a legal system which reduces them to a list of their violated parts; bloodied underwear; bruised thighs; the number of contracted sexually transmitted infections.
The anonymity survivors in these circumstances are afforded is meant as a rare act of consideration for the victim in a system that so often feels stacked against them. Under French law, Gisèle Pélicot could have gone along with that, and avoided letting the trial play out in the public eye. We might have never known her name or the details of her repeated personal traumas.
And yet, she declined it, preferring instead to describe out loud the most gruelling aspects of her own personal hell – to raise awareness of the dangers of “chemical submission”, but also because she wants to show others that they do not have to succumb to the shame routinely stamped into them.
“So when other women, if they wake up with no memory,” she said in a clear voice at the trial, “they might remember the testimony of Ms Pélicot.”
Whatever image Gisèle Pélicot leaves in the public mind, she will at least have put there herself as a real person, an individual with rights and an identity
This act of refusing to hide goes beyond one of individual courage. It interrogates the shame victims routinely face in trials such as this one. In court, her sentences boil and snap like water meeting hot oil.
“Nothing bothers me,” she told the judge, before unravelling the most intimate details about her sexuality.
In doing so, she also rejected another myth, the perverse ideal of the so-called “perfect victim”, which is used to strip victims of integrity. It is an act of applied shame, something the woman at the centre of this case point blank refused to allow. The perfect victim in this case, for at least the alleged perpetrators, would be the one who remained quiet. And yet, Pélicot insists on telling her own story, understanding that no narrative is as persuasive as her own.
Gisèle Pélicot’s activism may have been precipitated by the assaults on her, but the final word will be hers. By the end of the trial, whenever that might be, she will have unravelled herself in a number of acutely intimate situations. But whatever image she leaves in the public’s minds, she will at least have put there herself as a real person, an individual with rights and an identity. Her courage is a reminder that a woman’s bravery can cut even deeper than her fury.
Kate Demolder is a freelance journalist
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