Her husband orchestrating her sexual abuse by strangers could have broken her. But by standing up to her abusers in court and demanding they be ashamed, France’s Gisele Pelicot has become a feminist champion.

More than three months of sometimes gruelling hearings, including graphic video evidence, are set to culminate when judges hand down sentences on Thursday.

When the trial of her now ex-husband and 50 other defendants opened in the French city of Avignon in September, journalists saw a woman with short red hair, hiding behind sunglasses.

The main victim in the case that shocked France was a grandmother whose life partner had admitted to drugging her for almost a decade so he and dozens of strangers he recruited online could rape her while unconscious.

But then Gisele Pelicot waived her right to anonymity and demanded the public be allowed access to the trial to raise awareness about drug use to commit abuse.

She won hearts across France and abroad, and triggered a flurry of art in her honour, after she said it was her abusers — not her — who should be ashamed.

“I wanted all women who are rape victims to say to themselves: ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, so we can do it too’,” she told the court in October.

“It’s not us who should feel shame, but them,” she added, referring to perpetrators.

As news of the trial spread, protests erupted across France to show support and fans started cheering her or even greeting her with flowers when she arrived in court.

And over the trial’s course, Gisele Pelicot shed her dark sunglasses.

‘Rape is rape’

Ahead of the verdicts, the 72-year-old has made it onto the BBC’s 100 Women list for 2024, alongside fellow mass rape survivor and Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad and Hollywood actor Sharon Stone.

Pelicot in August obtained a divorce from her husband, who has confessed to the abuse after meticulously documenting it with photos and videos.

She has moved away from the southern town of Mazan where, in her own words, her husband Dominique Pelicot treated her like “a piece of meat” or a “rag doll” for years.

She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her former name as a married woman — the one passed on to some of her seven grandchildren.

In mid-September, she dropped her usual reserve to talk of her humiliation and her anger towards several lawyers who had made insinuations about her ordeal.

“Rape is rape,” she said.

In October, she said she was “broken” but determined to change society.

She again told the court last month it was time for a “macho, patriarchal” society to shift its attitude towards rape.

She said the marathon hearings were an examination of the “cowardice” of the men who took part in the assaults.

Many had argued they thought they were taking part in a couple’s fantasy after consent by proxy through her husband.

She expressed her anger that none of her abusers alerted the police about the rapes, which occurred between 2011 and 2020.

Several took part in the abuse six times.

Fifty men besides her 72-year-old ex-husband are on trial, including one who did not rape Gisele Pelicot but repeatedly abused his own wife with Dominique Pelicot’s help.

Several of the co-defendants have admitted to rape.

But more than 20 other suspects remain at large as investigators had not managed to identify them before the start of the mass trial.

Memory lapses

The daughter of a member of the military, Gisele Pelicot was born on December 7, 1952 in Germany, returning to France with her family when she was five.

When she was nine, her mother, aged just 35, died of cancer.

Her older brother Michel died of a heart attack aged 43, before her 20th birthday.

She met Dominique Pelicot, her future husband and rapist, in 1971.

She had dreamt of becoming a hairdresser but instead studied to be a typist. After a few years temping, she joined France’s national electricity company EDF, ending her career in a logistics service for its nuclear power plants.

At home, she looked after her three children, then seven grandchildren.

After she retired, she enjoyed walking and singing in a local choir.

Only when the police caught her husband filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020 did she find out the true reason behind her troubling memory lapses.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Dominique Pelicot, who has allegedly drugged and raped his wife, appears at the courthouse in Avignon, France, September 11, 2024, in this courtroom sketch.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

French prosecutors on Monday (November 26, 2024) demanded a maximum 20-year jail term for the man charged with enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his wife while she was drugged and unconscious, expressing hope the trial will help change “the relations between men and women”.

Dominique Pelicot has been on trial in the southern city of Avignon since September with 49 other men for organising the rapes and sexual abuse of his former wife. One man is being tried in absentia.

The case has sparked horror, protests and a debate about male violence in France. On Saturday, tens of thousands of protesters staged new demonstrations across the country against violence targeting women.

A prosecutor told the court on Monday that the trial should herald a fundamental change in society. “Twenty years is a lot because it is 20 years of a life,” prosecutor Laure Chabaud said in calling for the sentence.

“But it is both a lot and too little. Too little in view of the seriousness of the acts that were committed and repeated.” Gisele Pelicot said it was “a very emotional moment”.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted all charges against him. The 71-year-old plied his wife with anti-anxiety drugs from 2011 to 2020 at their home in the village of Mazan, then strangers he recruited online raped and abused her.

He documented the crimes in photos and videos discovered by police after being caught filming up women’s skirts in public.

Before and after

Prime Minister Michel Barnier called the trial a turning point for the country’s efforts to combat violence against women.

“I’m convinced that the Mazan trial will mark a before and after,” Barnier said, marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

“This trial is shaking up our society, in our relationship with each other, in the most intimate relationships between human beings,” said Jean-Francois Mayet, the other prosecutor.

What is at stake, he added, “is not a conviction or an acquittal” but “to fundamentally change the relations between men and women”.

Many of the accused argued in court that they believed Dominique Pelicot’s claim that they were participating in a libertine fantasy, in which his wife had consented to sexual contact and was only pretending to be asleep.

Among them, 33 have also claimed they were not in their right minds when they abused or raped Gisele Pelicot, a defence not backed by any of the psychological reports compiled by court-appointed experts.

“In 2024, we can no longer say: ‘Since she said nothing, she agreed’,” said Chabaud. “The absence of consent could not be ignored by the defendants.”

Sentencing requests were slated to take three days. Most of the defendants, including Dominique Pelicot, are charged with aggravated rape.

Dominique Pelicot, who said he wanted to “subjugate a disobedient woman”, was “devastated” by the sentencing request, said his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro.

Shame changes sides

Prosecutors requested a 17-year prison sentence for one defendant, Jean-Pierre M., 63, who applied Dominique Pelicot’s practices against his own wife to rape her a dozen times, sometimes in the presence of Pelicot.

Prosecutors demanded 10-year prison sentences for 11 co-defendants; 11 years’ imprisonment for two co-defendants, and 12-years’ imprisonment for another four.

Prosecutors also demanded that one man be jailed for 13 years, while four years’ imprisonment was requested for Joseph C., 69, the only one of the defendants not to be prosecuted for rape or attempted aggravated rape.

Some defence lawyers have described the sentencing demands as “staggering” and “out of proportion”, claiming the public prosecutor’s office was under pressure from “public opinion”.

“I fear what will happen next,” said Louis-Alain Lemaire, a lawyer for four of the defendants.

The trial has made Gisele Pelicot, who insisted the hearings be held in public, a feminist icon in the fight of women against sexual abuse.

Prosecutor Mayet praised her “courage” and “dignity”. She was the victim of some 200 rapes, half of which were attributed to her ex-husband.

Mayet thanked her for allowing the hearings to be held in public and allowing some of the approximately 20,000 photos and videos taken without her knowledge by Dominique Pelicot to be shown.

“You were right, madam: the past few weeks have shown the importance of showing this, so that shame changes sides,” he added. The verdicts and sentencing are expected by December 20.

The mayor of the French town where a man for over a decade brought strangers to rape his wife apologised on Friday for remarks that were criticised for playing down the ordeal of the victim.

Louis Bonnet, 74, mayor of Mazan in southern France, told broadcaster BBC in an interview that “after all, no one died” about the mass rape for which dozens of men are on trial.

They are accused of raping Gisele Pelicot at the invitation of her then-husband Dominique Pelicot who drugged her first.

“It could have been far more serious,” Bonnet told the BBC. “There were no kids involved. No women were killed.”

Bonnet’s remark caused a storm of indignation on social media in France and beyond.

“People say I minimised the serious nature of the abject crimes of which the defendants are accused,” Bonnet said in a statement posted on Facebook.

“I understand that people are shocked by these remarks and I am truly sorry.”

The mayor said his apologies were addressed “notably to women who were hurt by the clumsy words that were pronounced under the pressure felt in front of the microphone of a foreign media”.

Mazan and its 6,000 residents had been under “constant media pressure” since the start of the mass rape trial this month, he said.

Dominique Pelicot has admitted to drugging Gisele Pelicot into unconsciousness and inviting strangers to rape her.

She has become a feminist icon since demanding a public trial.

The trial has horrified France, partly because 71-year-old Dominique Pelicot’s co-defendants include apparently ordinary men such as a fireman, a nurse and a journalist, many of them with families.

Forty-nine co-defendants are accused of raping or attempting to rape Gisele Pelicot, and one is accused of imitating Dominique Pelicot to sexually assault his own wife.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)