Trigger warning. This article tackles several difficult topics, including rape and being drugged.
More and more people are claiming that feminism is useless now and that men and women are equal - at least in Western countries. Have these people heard about Dominique Pélicot, a seemingly loving husband, and what he did to his wife Gisèle for 10 years? How he and dozens of strangers raped her in her bedroom while she was unconscious? How she was not only assaulted for 10 years until finding out but also suffered from mental lacunes due to drugs Dominique Pélicot forced her to take without her knowledge? How the defense lawyer said loud and clear that "There is rape and rape!" adding that his clients had no intentions of raping Gisèle Pélicot, as she never explicitly said no?
Who is the Man?
Dominique Pélicot, now 71 years old, was described by his children and those close to him as a loving father and grandfather, helping his grandchildren with their homework, and driving them to their extracurriculars. His ex-wife admitted that he was a great husband: he was never violent against her, and never said anything obscene in her company. He was also a good and friendly neighbor, joining cycling trips or giving a hand with whatever was needed. Overall, the man gave nothing but the impression of an ordinary chap, a "Monsieur tout le monde," who seemed to maintain a stable and respectable life. However, under the surface, Pélicot was an entirely different man. Some even compared him to Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. As it turns out, the trial revealed that he was a man with heavy anger issues and destructive sexual pulsions.
The downward spiral started on September 12, 2020, when Pélicot was caught by a security guard in a supermarket, secretly taking photos of several women's underwear by slipping his camera under their skirts. This disgusting gesture marked the beginning of the discovery of much darker acts, leading to the exposure of his double life. As the French authorities found out, Pelicot was involved in multiple crimes committed years before, including the rape and murder of a young woman in 1991 and the sexual aggression of multiple women in 2010. However, the real shock was found on his computer under a folder named ABUS (abuse in French). Police officers discovered a total of 4000 videos and images of his unconscious wife, Gisèle, being raped by more than 72 men. Each of the files being dated and named. Horror is a euphemism when it comes to this story: a husband drugging his own wife for years and giving her to a multitude of men to possess her for an instant, in their marital bed. This horrifying story has shaken the whole of France since it came to light, underlining the need to keep advocating for gender equality. It has exposed deep-rooted societal issues, particularly in addressing “taboo” topics such as marital rape, which remains misunderstood by most people and often ignored. Moreover, while reading articles about the trial, it’s hard not to question how easily this could have been prevented with stricter government regulation of sexual content websites, particularly platforms like coco.gg, which was notorious for hosting pedophilic content. Despite progress in gender rights, this case serves as a reminder of the gaps in societal awareness and legal frameworks. It highlights how important it is to challenge the normalization of violence and ensure that such issues are brought to the forefront.
The Trial
The first weeks of the trial exposed that Pélicot invited the men through a website, coco.gg infamous for the facility with which sexual predators can exchange messages and pornographic content. Specifically, he would tell them not to wear any perfume or smoke before coming and to take off their shoes. After the abuse took place, Pelicot would methodically wash Gisele so she wouldn't notice anything. He thought about every detail to keep this nightmare going for ten years without her suspecting anything. However, her children did notice that something was off when she would have moments of absence, didn't remember what she just did, or didn't pick up the phone for hours. They suspected some neurological problem but were far, very far, from the terrible truth. Moreover, Gisèle had gynecological problems for years, including uterus inflammation, without being able to explain them.
Despite this abominable and life-shaking discovery, Gisèle Pélicot decided not to close the trial. This makes it memorable, and so out of the ordinary. Everyone could hear the words coming out of Dominique Pélicot's mouth when he finally stood in court: "I am a rapist, like all of the other accused in this room".
As he arrived in court, D. Pélicot confirmed all the allegations held against him. Mr. Hyde had been exposed through a myriad of proof that made it impossible not to. Health professionals recognized his tendency to obsessive sexual fantasies, including voyeurism, exhibitionism, rape, and some even mentioned necrophilia. However, in the defendant’s dock, the public only sees a man in his 70s. In front of him, crowded in the audience, are the 52 other men. Fathers, husbands, neighbors, doctors, and butchers between 26 and 73 years old. According to themselves and their loved ones, they are good men who did not know what they were doing, or they did not know it was wrong. Almost all of them claim their innocence. They thought it was a game between the couple. They thought the woman consented to their acts and that she wanted it, that she faked being asleep. Therefore, they maintain that they did not rape Madame Pélicot. The defense lawyers emphasize their client's lack of intention in their acts, as they believed it was a libertine game. They claim that their clients are simple men who were tricked by the manipulative mind of Dominique Pélicot, not knowing that Madam Pélicot was drugged and unconscious.
However, many specialists argue that the videos found on D. Pélicot's computer clearly show that Gisèle Pélicot was unconscious and that she could not have been "fake-sleeping." Additionally, the whole process preceding the act should have warned them about the non-consent of Madam Pélicot. As stated earlier, they could not smoke or wear perfume, had to take off their shoes and keep quiet, warm up their hands, and keep on their shirt before lying next to her and proceeding with the rape. Ten of these men already got acquainted with this process, as they came to the Pélicot household multiple times between 2011 and 2020, yet most still deny their crime, most still state it was an accident.
Is taking advantage of a woman, clearly unconscious, an accident? What does this mass rape trial tell us about the position of men in society?
Not all men?
In France, under the Ancien Régime (1589-1791), rape was not considered an independent crime, and very few women would report such an act. Indeed, rape was closely linked to loss of honor, casting a shadow of silence and shame upon the victims who were often blamed for what had happened to them. Additionally, doctors at the time would reinforce this stigma by claiming that an adult woman could not be raped since the hymen was already gone. This fuelled the blame on women as the perpetrators of their own victimization.
It wasn't until the Aix-en-Provence case of 1978, in which two Belgian women were raped and tortured for several days, that the French population started to question their perception of rape. The young women's lawyer, Gisèle Halimi, advised them to have an open trial - just like Mme Pélicot now. Halimi emphasized that shame should not weigh on the victims but on the perpetrators allowing the victims to regain their dignity. This trial is viewed as a landmark in addressing the issue of rape in France, whose laws redefined the crime as a sexual act committed by violence, coercion, threat, or surprise. To prove the perpetrator's intention, one of these elements must be demonstrated. Incidentally, since 1857, French legislation has recognized that a sleeping person cannot be considered as consenting. However, the legal definition of rape lacks the notion of "positive consent," the idea that consent must be active, enthusiastic, and an ongoing agreement rather than the mere absence of resistance or refusal. Indeed, in many legal systems, the victim often has the responsibility to prove they resisted or expressed non-consent, which perpetuates victim-blaming and overlooks situations that could prevent explicit refusal. Without including positive consent, the law fails to fully acknowledge the complexity of consent or protect individuals from situations where they are pressured and intimidated into complying. Therefore, implementing the concept of positive consent in the law would make it necessary to ensure that the person explicitly said yes.
In the context of Mazan's rapes, some of the accused claimed to have taken part in a libertine exchange, where the consent of the husband meant permission. This view reflects what jurist Catherine Le Magueresse describes as a male "right of appropriation," the entrenched belief that men are entitled to control women's bodies. In the absence of a clear legal framework around "positive consent," the penal code operates under the presumption of implicit consent, except if there is evidence of violence, coercion, threat, or surprise. This reinforces the idea that women can be treated as objects and possessions rather than autonomous individuals.
Historian Christelle Taraud emphasizes this concept further and believes that this trial underlines systemic gender violence rather than an isolated incident. She describes a continuum of violence that women experience throughout their lives, reinforced by societal norms and media intended for men, particularly pornography and its recurrent objectification and dehumanization of women. The defendants in the Mazan trial are a stark illustration of this normalized rape culture, with several of them describing their participation as casual and proving complete unawareness of the horror of their actions.
In 1963, Hannah Arendt developed the concept of the “banality of evil,” which challenges the idea that perpetrators of heinous crimes are monsters. On the contrary, she argues that it is often ordinary people who commit atrocities, detached from any moral implications because they can. What is more ordinary than the sample of men that raped Mme Pélicot for 10 years? The 52 accused men were average members of society from various social backgrounds and had no particular psychological profile. All of them raped Madam Pélicot without questioning her state of consciousness. Their detachment reveals how regular people can feel entitled to commit serious crimes, without taking responsibility for their wrongdoing. Arendt attributes this to the power of social norms and social dynamics, which normalize, rationalize, and allow such behavior.
On a lighter note, there is hope for change. The last 10 years have witnessed the rise of movements like #MeToo, bringing significant attention to these issues across the world. Created in 2006 by Tarana Burke (source) and propelled to international renown in 2017, #MeeToo became a powerful platform for survivors of sexual harassment and assault to break their silence, share their experiences, and regain their dignity. Victims were given the possibility to scream loud and clear that the shame must change sides.
Although the French mass rape trial highlights that significant societal changes are still necessary to dismantle the ingrained patriarchal norms rooted in French society, Gisèle Pélioct is a case of hope for all victims of sexual violence. She has shown the French and global public that shame is to fall on the perpetrators and that individual agency and bodily autonomy though consent are the basis of gender equality.
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