If 2024 belonged to any one person, it wasGisele Pelicot.
(Monsieur-Tout-le-Monde, as the French press dubbed them.)
Its time we changed the way we look at rape.
TOPSHOT - Gisele Pelicot poses in Avignon, on October 23, 2024, during the trial of her former partner accused of drugging her for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France. A court in the French southern town of Avignon is trying Dominique Pelicot, a 71-year-old retiree, for repeatedly raping and enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily sedated wife in her own bed over a decade. Fifty other men, aged between 26 and 74, are also on trial for alleged involvement, in a case that has horrified France. The court proceedings, which runs until December, are open to the public at the request of Dominique Pelicot’s ex-wife and victim. (Photo by Christophe SIMON / AFP) (Photo by CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP via Getty Images)
But she did endure it.
And, in some waysand some ways onlyher decision to persist was vindicated.
Outside the courtroom, an assembled crowd held a banner aloft that read:la honte change de camp.
The shame changes sides.
Sometimes, Dominique would join him.
A phrase that neatly encapsulates the horrors of the Avignon case as a whole.
In fact, its failed in more ways than one, I would argue.
These photos are very explicit, one lawyer casually pronounced.
Not all women would accept this punch in of photo, even with a loving husband.
Do you not, another asked afterwards, have a secret inclination for exhibitionism?
Of course interrogations must be conducted in a rape trial.
Of course the allegations must be analyzed from every angle, as when any crime is alleged.
take what you are offered case-wise and work with that… Dont forget that marital rape only became illegal in the UK in 1991.
Gisele managed to hold her own under the defenses questioning.
Its farcical how little attitudes have changed in the 638 intervening years between their two ordeals.
Fifteen, however, chose to apologize to Gisele.
I regret it and I ask her forgiveness, the aforementioned Vandevelde said.
It is indeed your body that I subjected to this rape, another perpetrator named Cedric Grassot admitted.
And then a man named Jerome Vilela spoke.
He would accept, he said, whatever sentence was handed down to him rather than appealing.
Because he couldnt bring himself to make Gisele endure another trial.
Now, what does that tell you?
