French victim of mass rape hopes to help others

Gisele Pelicot, the 72-year-old victim of mass rape whose ordeal has shocked the world, told a trial in southern France on Wednesday that she was determined that making her case public should help other women and change society.

Dominique Pelicot, her husband, has admitted to inviting dozens of strangers over nearly 10 years to their house to rape her after he had drugged her. Fifty other men also stand trial, accused of raping her.

Her voice often shaking with emotion, Gisele Pelicot told the court in Avignon that she was destroyed by what happened to her. She said how “unbelievably violent” it was for her that many of the accused in the trial, which started on Sept.2, said they thought she agreed to the rapes or was faking sleeping.

“I’ve decided not to be ashamed, I’ve done nothing wrong,” Gisele Pelicot, who has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence, told the court in Avignon.

Pelicot said she had insisted the trial be held publicly, and not behind closed doors, as is often the case to protect rape victims, in the hope it would help other rape victims.

The rapists “are the ones who must be ashamed,” she said, adding that having videos, filmed by her husband, of some of her rapes, shown during the trial, was “very difficult but necessary.”

“I’m not expressing hatred or hate, but I am determined that things change in this society,” she said.

Some have apologized, but Pelicot told the court those apologies were “inaudible,” telling the court: “By apologizing, they are trying to excuse themselves.”

Saying her husband’s betrayal of her trust was beyond measure, she said, “I’m a woman who’s totally destroyed.”

She had thought he was the perfect husband, she told the court, before adding: “My life has tumbled into nothingness.”

Despite video evidence against them, at least 35 of the defendants have denied the rape charges, claiming that Dominique Pelicot tricked them into believing they were taking part in a sex game, or that Gisele Pelicot was feigning sleep.

The case has prompted deep soul searching in France, where Didier Migaud, the country’s new justice minister, has suggested changes to its rape law to include consent for the first time could be introduced after the trial challenged the limits of existing legislation and prompting some leading politicians to call for change.

Migaud recently said he is in favor of updating the law, as has President Emmanuel Macron, after France blocked the inclusion of a consent-based rape definition in a European directive in 2023.

“I believe it is beyond understanding for our fellow citizens to refuse to include consent in the definition of rape,” Migaud told lawmakers earlier this month.

Consent-based rape law already exists in Sweden, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and more than a dozen other European countries, with the rise of the feminist #MeToo movement prompting legislative reform in some jurisdictions since 2017.

However, French criminal law defines rape as a penetrative act or oral sex act committed on someone using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise”. It makes no clear mention of the need for a partner’s consent and prosecutors must prove the intention to rape to secure a guilty verdict, five legal experts told Reuters.

France has been reluctant to move away from this definition and it’s a hotly debated issue. Some legal experts and women’s rights activists said consent puts scrutiny on the victim’s behavior and words, rather than the accused, and that a person can say “yes” without wanting to.

The Pelicot trial brought the issue into sharp relief, when the court was shown a video of one defendant having sex with Gisele Pelicot while she was asleep.

According to a study by the Institute of Public Policies published this year, only 14% of all rape complaints lead to a formal investigation in France, with prosecutors often unable to find sufficient proof that the perpetrator had used violence, threat, coercion or surprise.

Carole Hardouin-Le Goff, a law professor who specializes in sexual violence, said the trial had laid bare a legal loophole.

“If we write into the law that a person must make sure their partner consents, there is no possible defense for these 50 men,” she said, although any changes would not apply retroactively to this trial.