Gisèle Pelicot: Abused by Her Husband for Nine Years

Waltercolor, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Gisèle Pelicot, a 72-year-old former supply chain manager from France, led a demanding professional life. During the week, she dedicated herself to her career, but her weekends became a source of frustration. Instead of enjoying her down-time, she found herself succumbing to unplanned, prolonged sleep, often waking up with no recollection of how or when she had gone to bed.

Soon, Gisèle Pelicot discovered she was the victim of unconscious sexual violence when the French police showed her pictures and videos of her being abused by men in her bedroom. The perpetrator of the shocking incident was her 71-year-old then-husband, Dominique Pelicot.

The trial, which began on September 3, 2024, revealed disturbing evidence that between 2011 and 2020, Dominique systematically drugged his wife and orchestrated assaults by other men he recruited online while recording the horrific acts. Dominique organized his films and photos in a folder titled "abuse," with dates and file names for most of the footage. Dominique also had a folder that had collages of his daughter and daughters-in-law incapacitated. As part of his crimes, Dominique recruited men on the internet on a now-defunct website without Gisèle's knowledge. This website was prolific in France for being associated with child sexual abuse cases, homophobic incidents, and those related to drug trafficking.

Through the website, Dominique was able to organize more than 200 acts of sexual violence and enlisted more than 90 men to participate in the offenses. On June 19, 2023, a judge indicted 51 men for sexual violence, the accused ranging from 25 to 72 years old. The defendants included firefighters, IT experts, journalists, nurses, plumbers, correctional officers, and truck drivers. Initially, the prosecutor and several defense lawyers requested anonymity during the trial. However, Gisèle Pelicot opposed this, insisting on a public trial to raise awareness of her experience and prevent other women from enduring the same horrors. After the five professional magistrates deliberated, the presiding judge, Roger Arata, announced that the trial would be in public.

Many of the defendants were individuals with families, with about 41 being from the local area where the crime occurred. While most were charged with one count of sexual violence, some faced multiple charges, including a man who faced six counts. Additionally, five of the defendants faced charges of possessing child pornography. If the defendants are found guilty, they could face up to 20 years of imprisonment. Some of the defendants admitted their guilt, while others claimed they participated in the acts in a consensual manner, claiming they assumed Gisèle was either pretending to be asleep or agreed to be drugged. Some other defendants justified their actions by claiming that Dominique's permission for them to commit these acts on Gisèle was enough. Twelve defendants appealed their convictions on October 5, 2023. However, the local Court of Appeal rejected their motion.

In light of the trial, there have been talks in France about changing the country's sexual violence law to include a consent-based definition for the first time. The Gisèle Pelicot case has challenged the limits of the existing legislation and prompted leading politicians to advocate for reform. These calls for change follow France's decision to block the inclusion of protections against sexual violence in a European directive in 2023. The Directive on combating violence against women was meant to be historic for women's rights. Still, activists claim it falls short of achieving gender equality due to the omission of a consent-based sexual violence definition. For feminists and human rights advocates, the key shortcoming is the lack of a standardized definition of sexual violence based on explicit consent. Without such a definition, only a few EU Member States currently recognize that only an explicit 'yes' constitutes consent to sexual contact, such as Spain. By omitting the criteria that only a clear 'yes' constitutes consent, the current EU laws don't fully cover situations where a victim freezes during an act of sexual violence and can't move or say 'no' to the sexual encounter. 

While the trial was ongoing, France's new Justice Minister, Didier Migaud, expressed his support in early October 2024 for updating the country's sexual violence laws, as has President Emmanuel Macron. According to a French survey conducted by one of France's major polling institutes, IFOP, nine out of ten people wanted France to adopt the EU directive. While some countries in the EU have consent-based sexual violence laws, French laws define rape as a penetrative act or oral sex act committed through violence, coercion, threat, or surprise. French criminal law lacks an explicit mention of the need for a partner's consent, and prosecutors must prove the intention of sexual abuse to secure a guilty verdict. Women's rights activists and legal experts say that France's sexual violence law puts the burden on the victim's behavior or words instead of the accused. 

As the trial progressed in the southern French city of Avignon, many came to show support and solidarity for Gisèle. The case, expected to continue into December 2024, has sparked some soul-searching in France. For many women, Gisèle has become a feminist icon, praised for her courage, strength, and dignity in confronting these horrors. Her decision to open the trial to the public rather than keep it behind closed doors has been widely lauded as a brave and transformative decision.