The Pelicot trial featured three months of lurid testimony and a lot of gruesome imagery among the 20,000 videos and stills that Dominique Pelicot took when he invited dozens of internet strangers into the marital bed to rape his wife. But it was the other photographs of Gisèle Pelicot — head high as she entered the courtroom nearly every single day of those three months — that will hold resonance over time.
Gisèle, as her worldwide fans now refer to her, per the familiarity of fame, bore the burden of witnessing every moment of her own humiliation as it was examined from every angle. That stoicism, and the brave example she set standing up for herself and on behalf of all women, is what will be remembered most from this sordid case.
All 51 men were found guilty; Dominique, dubbed “The Monster of Avignon,” the evil mastermind of the unthinkable violation of his wife, received the maximum penalty under French law of 20 years for aggravated assault.
Gisèle heard his verdict with her head leaned back against the wall of the courtroom, his betrayal seemingly so heavy that it physically weighed her down. But she leaned forward to watch the faces of every single other man — a ragtag group of complete strangers, from age 26 to 74, who had been found guilty of assaulting her as she was drugged unconscious — as they received their sentences. She was all of us, trying to figure out how the hell those men could have done what they did to her.
By relinquishing her right to privacy and making the trial public, Gisèle Pelicot became a feminist icon. Crowds hailed her outside the courtroom throughout the trial. Women watched and cheered her on from around the world. Social media has been ablaze this week with support for her as the judgments neared; a meme showing her as the rightful Time Person of the Year (instead of Donald J. Trump) made the rounds.
Pelicot embodied the frustrations women have with reporting rape, and the lack of hope in ever finding justice. At its legal centre, the trial was about the concepts of intent and consent under French law. The defence of many of the men on trial for assault was that they didn’t mean to do anything wrong; they were mislead by Dominique, who said that Gisèle was a willing, if unconscious participant; that they accepted her husband’s consent by proxy. One defendant, a 54-year-old grandfather of five identified as Ahmed T., testified that he believed Gisèle must have been “shy.”
In other words, that in some twisted way how the men viewed their participation in the act was the important thing. Horseshit. As Gisèle said in court, none of these men had a gun to their heads. This enormously public trial and its findings may have repercussions in France’s penal code, as the case made it unavoidably clear that Gisele Pelicot’s consent mattered.
But the larger effect of the trial is that we all saw a woman who was assaulted stand up, despite the personal cost to herself, and we saw her win. We may never know how she feels about individual sentences: she said she had “no regrets” and that she accepted the verdicts.
Because the Pelicot case was so heinous in detail, so large in scale, because the victims and perpetrators alike were all so ordinary, Gisèle has shifted the conversation around sexual assault everywhere. She opened the world’s eyes, and forced us to look at her. What we saw was extraordinary: a woman who emerged from the ashes of her own torched life and forced a burning conversation about consent into the mainstream.
Appearing in front of cameras outside the courtroom after the verdicts were rendered and the sentences announced, Gisèle read a statement that thanked her lawyers and tireless supporters, and the media she had met during the ordeal who she said had treated her with respect. In translation from her remarks in French, she spoke of her children and grandchildren: “I am thinking first and foremost about my children David, Caroline and Florian. I am thinking also about my grandchildren. For them I really wanted to take this struggle forward.”
Indeed, even as she can now focus on healing from her own ordeal and the spotlight of the arduous trial, Gisèle will also need to be there for her own family. The horror didn’t end with Gisèle. Her daughter, Caroline Darian, and a former daughter-in-law, Aurore Pelicot, are dealing with the ugly fact that their own naked photos were also found on Dominique’s hard drive. Both victims, like Gisèle, waived their right to privacy.
In a heart-rendering statement, Darian said at trial that she felt “invisible and forgotten” in the case; her photos were found in a folder entitled “My Naked Daughter.” Darian said she is clearly drugged in the photos. (Dominique Pelicot has denied abusing his daughter, even as all three children begged him to come clean in court.) The daughter-in-law, Aurore, was captured by Dominique via a hidden camera naked while pregnant with twins; her marriage to Florian Pelicot did not survive this revelation. The mind boggles at how they all even begin to heal.
And yet, Gisèle left the crowd gathered at the Avignon courthouse with some impossibly hopeful final words. Again, in translation, she said, “I want to take hold of a future in which everybody, men and women, can live together in harmony, respect and mutual understanding.”
