Gisèle Pelicot Hopes Her Mass Rape Trial Will Help Other Survivors Feel Less Shame

On the stand, Pelicot, whose horrifying trial has shaken France, railed against the notion that rapists are just "someone in a parking lot at night."

By Audra Heinrichs | October 24, 2024 | 3:51pm

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Gisèle Pelicot Hopes Her Mass Rape Trial Will Help Other Survivors Feel Less Shame

This week, Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman whose ex-husband is on trial for inviting over 80 men to rape her while she was unconscious between 2011 and 2020, took the stand for a second time in the months-long proceedings to deliver more searing testimony.

“I express neither my anger nor my shame,” Gisèle told the court on Wednesday. “I am expressing a desire to change society.” Since September, Gisèle’s appalling case has not only sent shock waves across the country—and the world—but made the 72-year-old mother and grandmother a hero.

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Gisèle’s husband of nearly 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, was first investigated by French authorities in November 2020, after he was caught taking photos up women’s skirts at a supermarket in southeastern France. During that investigation, police discovered a folder on his computer entitled “abuses,” which contained thousands of photos and videos (many of which have since been shown in court) of Pelicot and other men—complete strangers—raping his then-wife while she was unconscious. In total, police counted 20,000 images and found that over 80 men had taken part. Not only did Gisèle have no idea, but she’d considered their marriage a happy one.

Since the proceedings began in September, Dominique and many of the 49 co-defendants have also taken the stand. The former has admitted he began secretly administering a drug that rendered Gisèle unconscious after she refused to swing with other couples.

“She didn’t deserve this, I recognize that,” a reportedly “emotional” Pelicot told the court last month. “I am a rapist just like all the others in this room. I ask my wife, my children (and) my grandchildren to accept my apologies. I regret what I did. I ask for your forgiveness, even if it is not forgivable.”

The co-defendants, on the other hand, have asserted they had no idea Pelicot was drugging his wife—even though they met him on a now-defunct message board called “Without Their Knowledge”—and purported that they, too, are victims in this exceedingly disturbing case. Worse yet, are the co-defendants’ partners, many of whom have stood by them on the stand. One woman, for example, said her partner, Jérôme V., was “special” and that she visits him in prison on a regular basis: “I’m not giving up, I’ve been looking for answers to my questions for three and a half years,” she said. “I know he’s special, I keep digging to find out what made him do it.”

In her testimony, Gisèle said she had listened to many of the wives, mothers, and sisters describe the defendants as “exceptional men” who they thought were incapable of rape.

“Me, I had the same in my house,” she said of Dominique, adding that she had considered him the “perfect man.”

“A rapist is not someone in a parking lot at night,” Gisèle added. Dominique, she said, did much of the cooking in the house and even brought her favorite dessert, raspberry ice cream, to her on a nightly basis. This, she now understands, was how he administered the drug.

Before Dominique’s arrest, Gisèle said she feared she was developing Alzheimer’s or another serious illness due to years of inexplicable memory lapses, hair loss, and weight loss. On the stand, she described how Dominique attended multiple doctors’ appointments with her in pursuit of a diagnosis—all the while he was plying her with drugs, inviting strangers into their home to rape her, and prolifically documenting their assaults.

Gisèle says the point of pursuing a public trial, and to keep attending the proceedings, is to subvert shame—not just for her, but for all survivors of sexual violence.

“I don’t want the victims to feel shame; they are the ones who should feel shame,” she said of the defendants. “I want victims of rapes to tell themselves, ‘If Ms. Pelicot did it, so can we.'”