Paris The lady at the center of France’s historic mass rape trial seemed to shrink when she arrived at the bleak Avignon courthouse on September 2, her face concealed beneath dark sunglasses and surrounded by a line of attorneys and family members.
Eventually, 72-year-old Gis le Pelicot found her voice, exposing not only the unthinkable abuse committed by her husband—who was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for drugging her and inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious—but also a culture that many activists have characterized as sexist, accepting of violence against women, and unresponsive to change.
Two men were convicted of attempted rape, two of sexual assault, and 46 other men were found guilty of rape. They all received the same 20-year sentence, and their ages ranged from 26 to 74.
France will never be the same, according to many here. They wonder how it’s possible that so many ostensibly normal men—including a writer, a firefighter, a nurse, and a former sports coach—were caught on camera doing unimaginable things to a snoozing grandma.
According to author, lawyer, and feminist Anne Bouillon, “it brings us back to the idea of who we are as a society, for normal men to commit acts that are totally transgressive and criminal.” According to her, the Pelicot case emphasizes that women are most vulnerable at home, when they face threats from their partners, since domestic violence reports in France have doubled since 2016.
The issue has struck a chord with Blandine Deverlanges, a high school teacher, the founder of the feminist organization Les Amazones d Avignon, and a frequent visitor to the tribunal.
She claimed that there was a great deal of rage. It goes well beyond the problem of rape. It comes down to hearing what women have to say.
Several feminists questioned whether France is experiencing a second wave of the #MeToo movement, which swept through the country’s film sector following the 2017 takedown of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein but did not have the same impact on a wider scale as in the US and other nations. In the past, France has stood up for brave persons who behave poorly, like exiled filmmaker Roman Polanski. The cause was not aided by well-known French women, such as Catherine Deneuve, who signed a statement condemning sexual puritanism and defending men’s ability to harass women.
However, women claim that this time around, the atmosphere feels different. Last week, in another closely watched trial seen asFrance s first major #MeToo case, Christophe Ruggia, a little-known film director, was charged with isolating and repeatedly sexually assaulting rising star Ad le Haenel, beginning when she was 12 and he was 36. The 35-year-old Haenel eventually quit the business and criticized grownups for not supporting her. A verdict is anticipated in February; he denies the charges.
With tempers running high over the Pelicot case, activists are hoping to mobilize that outrage into an effort not only to help victims of sexual assault, but also to transform a society in which75% of women say they are not treated equally,according to a 2024 government study.
In France, we haven t paid much attention to sexual violence, said Muriel R us, a radio host who started the organization Femmes Avec to help victims of domestic violence and sexual assault navigate the justice system.
230,000 women reported experiencing sexual violence in the past year.
That s the equivalent of the population of Lille, R us noted, citing the city on the northern border with Belgium.
Much of the discussion has focused on the wording of France s rape law, which some feminist lawyers say is vague, particularly in cases in which a victim is intoxicated or, like Pelicot, subjected to being drugged, known as chemical submission.
Dominique Pelicot has acknowledged squeezing a lot of sleeping pills and anxiety-reducing drugs into his wife’s food and beverages. She would discover the truth only in November 2020, weeks after police arrested her husband after he was caught recording up the skirts of women in a supermarket.
Rape is defined under French law as an act of sexual penetration committed by violence, coercion, threat or surprise. Defense lawyers have insisted that their clients did not intend to commit rape because Dominique Pelicot invited them into the family home, and gave them careful instructions on what he wanted them to do to his wife.
This is not American law. In France, you don t need to have obtained the victim s consent necessarily to ensure that it s not rape, said lawyer Guillaume de Palma, who represents several of the defendants.
We have a real problem with French law, said Magali Lafourcade, secretary general of theNational Consultative Commission on Human Rights. There are a huge number of situations which are not rape under French law [but] which are rape in the eyes of the victim.
She said most European countries have adapted their laws and procedures to streamline rape investigations and help victims.
Lafourcade, a veteran magistrate with experience investigating sexual assault cases, was among 500 activists who signed an open letter calling for a consent provision to be added to the law.
But other activists and lawyers say the law is sufficient, with consent implied. Anything more explicit, they say, would force the victim to prove a lack of consent.
Opposing camps do agree on one point: France must overhaul a system that makes it difficult to report sexual violence. From making a police report to following up with a timely medical exam, they agree that it is often a luck of the draw whether a police officer will follow proper procedure or a hospital or an emergency room nurse will agree to take essential DNA samples.
Aurore Hendrickx, 26, a Paris event planner, said she has a few friends who have been sexually assaulted and tried without success to file reports with the police.
Most of the time, they were almost laughing at them, she said of the police response, adding that a stunning 90% of her friends have been sexually assaulted or raped. One friend was almost killed by a violent partner.
If police give victims the brush-off, it is often no better at hospitals, where traumatized women are often turned away, advocates say.
Filmmaker Linda Bendali, who has researched cases of chemical submission sometimes called date rape said a friend s 23-year-old daughter woke up naked in a strange man s bed last March with no idea how she got there. Her last memory was sipping a drink in a Paris bar.
I called the hospital and told them they could see her now. They said, No, come back tomorrow, Bendali said, fuming, adding that she pushed hard to demand they take timely blood and hair samples, essential to prove whether the victim had ingested drugs.
While the victim is awaiting a court date, that is a rare occurrence. Only6% of rape complaintsare investigated in France. After that, a trial is conducted behind closed doors a process that feminist historian Christelle Taraud called truly horrible for the victim, who is often treated badly by the defense lawyers, with no public accountability.
Taraud called it an electric shock when a judge reluctantly approved Pelicot s demand to keep her trial open, even when intimate videos of her were aired. Finally, Taraud said, the public got to hear and see evidence of the horrific violence inflicted on Pelicot, whose show of strength hasmade her an international icon.
They treated her like a piece of meat, Taraud said.
In testimony that left many spectators speechless, some of the men appeared to be acting out porn film fantasies. One of them, a former firefighter busted with thousands of images of child pornography, gave a thumbs up to the camera during the assault.
The defendants, who met Dominique Pelicot in a now-defunct online chat room called without her knowledge, told the five-judge panel that they believed the prone woman was a willing participant. Though her lolling head would seem to indicate otherwise, they called the petite woman, often dressed in lingerie, a swinger acting out a Sleeping Beauty fantasy.
I m a rapist, like the others in this room, Dominique Pelicot said at the start of the trial. Slumped in a glass box, he was separated from the other defendants.
Dominique Pelicot s cache of 20,000 photos and videos included snaps of his daughter, Caroline Darian, naked in bed. While he has insisted that he did not abuse her, Darian, whose book, I ll Never Call Him Dad Again,will be published in Englishnext month, told the court that she ll never know what really happened. Did he also drug me? she wondered. Worse still, did he abuse me?
In her final statement to the court, Pelicot made it clear that she is hoping her humiliation won t be in vain.
It s time that the macho, patriarchal society that trivializes rape changes, she said.
The Gis le effect extends beyond Avignon, where the retired logistics manager is applauded and handed bouquets of flowers. Schoolgirls call her name. Strangers send gifts. In a phenomenon that must be deeply satisfying to the woman who wanted shame to change sides, activists say women who hadn t dared speak about domestic violence and sexual assault credit Pelicot with giving them courage to share their stories.
It s totally because of Gis le that I have the strength to talk about it, said Latika, 33, who is still recovering from trauma four years after divorcing a violent husband.
The beatings she said she endured were only part of the story. Latika said she learned the man she met at age 17, the father of her children, had been feeding her drugs for years. Like Pelicot, there were signs something was off, but she didn t connect the dots. One night I didn t drink all of my tea, she said, and she awoke to find her husband raping her.
NBC News has not been able to independently corroborate her allegations.
Latika has found solace as part of an equine therapyprogram at Lucky Horse, a 25-acre ranch nestled in the foothills of Mount Ventoux in the picture-postcard village of Mazan, about a mile from the former Pelicot home.
Marion Vogel opened the ranch with her husband, a psychotherapist who has worked with domestic violence survivors, to help women develop life skills by working with animals. They ride horses without saddles and stirrups to connect body to body. They learn to trust themselves.
First up for Latika was overcoming her fear of horses. She spent half a year building up her confidence tending to an adorable Shetland pony before graduating up to Z phyr, a sleek champagne quarter horse with a white slash between his eyes who is now her favorite.
She brushes Z phyr s silky mane and takes him for rides in the same lanes and fields where, Vogel noted, Pelicot used to take long walks.
Like Pelicot, Vogel said, these women all have something to fight for.
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