Mazan is a postcard of Provence – a small medieval village perched on a hill, surrounded by vineyards, in view of the windswept Mount Ventoux rising in the distance.
For years, it was known for its nearby cycling routes often featured in the Tour de France, and for a notorious figure from the 18th century, the Marquis de Sade, whose graceful mansion in the middle of the village has become its fanciest hotel.
Now it is infamous as the place where Gisèle Pelicot was regularly drugged by her husband of 50 years and offered up to strange men for sex. In September, 51 men went on trial in nearby Avignon, most charged with the aggravated rape of Pelicot (71).
Some 15 of the defendants, including Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle Pelicot’s ex-husband, have pleaded guilty. The rest have said they had sex with her but contest the rape charges. Most argue they were lured into the couple’s bedroom by her husband, with a promise of a threesome, and were led to believe she was pretending to sleep or was sleeping as part of the couple’s sex fantasy.
The trial has rattled the country, raising profound and disturbing questions about relations between men and women, and the prevalence of rape.
No place has been as shaken as Mazan, 34km northeast of Avignon, with a population of 6,300.
Here, the story is not just horrifying; it feels oppressively personal.
“It’s not on the other side of the world,” said Elisabeth Koenig (72), who lives a few blocks from the couple’s former home, which she used to pass regularly walking her dog. “It’s at my home that this happened. It feels a bit like it’s in our family.”
A few weeks ago, she drove to Avignon with her granddaughter to spend the day in the courthouse watching the trial. She left “red as a poppy” with fury, she said.
“It’s a catastrophe,” she said. She said she imagined the horror of learning of a family member’s “harming my children or my grandchildren like that”. Koenig added, “It feels personal, this story.”
[ Gisèle Pelicot’s horrifying experience is familiar to some women in IrelandOpens in new window ]
About 30 per cent of Mazan’s residents are retired, drawn by the mild temperatures, quaint village feel and access to big-city amenities and culture nearby. That’s what drew the Pelicots in 2013, when they moved from the Paris area soon after Gisèle Pelicot retired from her management job at a large French company.
They rented a pretty, pale yellow bungalow on a cul-de-sac, with a pool and lush garden, where their children and grandchildren gathered for long summer vacations together. It was just a 15-minute walk from the historic part of town, with its shops and cafes.
Around the corner lies the town’s main sports complex, where children play football on weekends, and where Dominique Pelicot instructed the men he met online and invited to his home to park their cars, so as to not draw his neighbours’ suspicion.
Then, he told the court last month, he’d shepherd them into the house, instruct them to strip naked in the kitchen in case his wife woke up and they needed to leave quickly, and took them into the bedroom where she was unconscious, often snoring loudly.
Rumours had circulated in town before the trial began. But many dismissed them as exaggerated or even simply impossible. This is a small town, where everyone is separated by no more than two degrees, not a big city, where horrible things happen, many thought.
“We imagined it could happen elsewhere, but not here,” said Anne Pinna (57), who joined with some 500 people at a recent march from the town to a nearby horse farm, which had organised the event in support of Gisèle Pelicot and other victims of rape and violence. “We are a village of families.”
Only three of the defendants, including Dominique Pelicot, were from Mazan. Most of the rest lived within a 65km radius – close enough that many locals know one or two.
“I’ve cut ties,” Pinna said of one man she knew. “I find it so disgusting, I don’t even want to hear what he says. There is no excuse.”
During the police investigation, the suspect list grew to 83. But the police were only able to identify and track down just over 50.
The rest were never found, stirring an uneasy suspicion in the stomachs of many in town.
“I admit that when I’m at the post office or elsewhere, I say to myself, ‘Well, this guy, I wonder if he went to see Madame Pelicot,’” said Koenig, a retired manager.
At the Saturday market in front of City Hall recently, Frédérique Imbs tucked the leeks she had just bought into her bag and looked up, past the musicians playing guitar and bass in the distance. “How can people get to that place?” she asked, before adding, “Maybe even one of those men in front of us.”
The trial and its daily revelations have also caused political upheaval in Mazan.
In a clumsy attempt to protect the town’s reputation, Mayor Louis Bonnet told the BBC last month that “it would have been much worse” if Dominique Pelicot “had killed his wife”, adding that she would be able to rebuild her life because she was not dead.
The interview draw a backlash, and he later apologised, saying he had been besieged by journalists, many looking to smear the town, he said, and “in the relentless media pressure” had chosen the wrong words. Still, the reaction was swift.
“As an elected official, and above all as a woman, I cannot understand his comments in any way, much less tolerate them,” said Eve Gallas, among the opposition councillors calling for the mayor to resign. “I have the impression that he never sought to support Madame Pelicot and her family.”
In the face of the criticism, Bonnet recently took some time off, offering no date for returning to work. A month after the BBC report, he has put out a new statement doubling down on his comments about journalists and adding that Gisèle Pelicot should be respected for her courage and that all of Mazan supported her.
Many are upset that their hometown is now linked to this terrible story and that the national newspapers have sections on their home pages about the “Mazan rapes”.
“There are other repercussions that will endure,” said Christophe Simonini, a local apiarist and olive farmer, selling olive oil and honey at the Saturday market.
At the recent march in support of Gisèle Pelicot, through an idyllic landscape of vineyards and olive trees, many in the crowd echoed the shock and horror that have pervaded the country watching this trial, as well as a budding hope that it would somehow herald a profound societal change for France.
Near the back of the march, two friends carrying white roses said they didn’t know Pelicot before she packed up in a hurry and left the house that had become a crime scene, and the town, forever.
But they spoke about her as if they knew her. They said they admired her for her dignity and for her courage to allow an open trial as a public service. She was a grandmother, as they are. And she came from Mazan.
“I hope she is really supported after the trial,” said Anne Chartier (66), a retired midwife. “She will need to rebuild herself.”
Her friend Dany Baychère (76), concurred: “She might collapse, the poor thing. She is being offered flowers and applauded in court. But afterwards, there will be an emptiness.”
She added, “It will not be easy for her.” – This article originally appeared in The New York Times
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