Sensational mass trial sheds dark light on France’s rape culture

AVIGNON, France — They are, at first glance, the most ordinary men. However, they are all tried for rape. Fathers, grandfathers, husbands, workers and retirees — 50 in total — accused of taking turns over the drugged and inert body of Gisèle Pelicot while her husband recorded the horror for his bloated private video library.

The harrowing and unprecedented trial in France reveals how pornography, chat rooms and men’s disregard for consent or their unclear understanding of consent fuel rape culture. The horror is not only that Dominique Pélicot, in his own words, had men rape his wife, it is that he had no difficulty finding dozens of them to participate.

Among the nearly two dozen defendants who testified during the first seven weeks of the trial was Ahmed T. — The full last names of French defendants are generally kept secret until they are convicted. The married plumber, father of three and five grandchildren, said he wasn’t particularly alarmed that Pelicot wasn’t moving when he visited him and his now ex’s house -husband, in the small Provençal town of Mazan in 2019.

It reminded him of porn he had watched featuring women who “pretend to sleep and don’t react,” he said.

Like him, many other defendants told the court that they could not imagine that Dominique Pelicot was drugging his wife and that they had been told that she was voluntarily participating in a perverse fantasy. Dominique Pelicot denied this claim, telling the court that his co-defendants knew exactly what the situation was.

For the first time since the start of the trial, Gisèle Pelicot spoke on Wednesday of her husband’s “immeasurable” betrayal and expressed her sympathy for the wives, mothers and sisters of her 50 co-defendants, French media reported.

“I always wanted to pull you towards the light,” she said, addressing her ex-husband. “You have chosen the depths of the human soul.”

Céline Piques, spokesperson for the feminist group Dare Feminism!, or Dare Feminism! says she is convinced that many of the men on trial were inspired or perverted by pornography, including videos found on popular websites. Although some sites have begun cracking down on search terms such as “unconscious,” hundreds of videos of men having sex with apparently passed out women can be found online, she said.

Piques was particularly struck by the testimony of a technology expert at trial who had found the search terms “sleeping porn” on Dominique Pelicot’s computer.

Last year, French authorities recorded 114,000 victims of sexual violence, including more than 25,000 reported rapes. But experts say most rapes go unreported due to a lack of hard evidence: around 80% of women do not file complaints, and 80% of those who do have their cases dropped before an investigation is carried out. open.

In contrast, the trial was unique in its scope, nature and openness to the public at the victim’s insistence.

After a store security guard caught Pelicot filming up unsuspecting women’s skirts in 2020, police searched his home and found thousands of pornographic photos and videos on his phone, computer laptop and its USB key. Dominique Pelicot later said that he recorded and stored the sexual encounters of each of his guests, and carefully organized them into separate files.

Among those he took in was Mahdi D., who said that when he left his home on the night of October 5, 2018, he did not intend to rape anyone.

“I thought she was sleeping,” the 36-year-old transportation worker told the five-judge panel, referring to Gisèle Pelicot, who attended the trial almost every day and became a hero to many victims of sexual abuse for insisting that it be public.

“I grant you that you did not leave with the intention of raping anyone,” the prosecutor replied. “But there, in the room, it was you.”

Like some of the other men accused of raping Pelicot between 2011 and 2020, Mahdi D. admitted almost all of the charges against him. And he expressed his remorse by telling the judges: “She is a victim. We can’t imagine what she went through. It was destroyed.

But he wouldn’t call it rape, even though admitting it was might get him a lighter sentence. That led prosecutors to ask the court to play the graphic videos of Mahdi D.’s visit to Pelicot’s home.

In June, authorities closed the chat room where Dominique Pelicot and his co-defendants allegedly met. Since the trial began on September 2, it has resonated far beyond the walls of the Avignon court, sparking protests in French cities large and small and inspiring a steady stream of opinion pieces and open letters written by journalists, philosophers and activists.

It also attracted curious visitors to the city in southeastern France, such as Florence Nack, her husband and 23-year-old daughter, who came from Switzerland to witness this “historic trial.”

Nack, who stressed that she had also been a victim of sexual violence, said she was troubled by the testimony of truck driver Cyprien C., 43, a defendant who spoke that day in court.

Asked by the chief judge, Roger Arata, if he recognized the facts, Cyprien C. replied that he “did not contest the sexual act”.

“What about rape? Arata pressed. The accused remained silent before finally responding: “I can’t answer. »

Arata then began to describe what involved him in the videos. They are only presented as a last resort and on a case-by-case basis. But for many people in the courtroom, such detailed descriptions can last several minutes and be just as heavy as watching them. Gisèle Pelicot, aged around sixty, chose to stay in the courtroom while the videos were broadcast. Unable to look, she usually closes her eyes, stares at the ground, or buries her face in her hands.

Experts and groups fighting sexual violence say the refusal or inability of defendants to admit to their rape clearly demonstrates the taboos and stereotypes that persist in French society.

For Magali Lafourcade, judge and secretary general of the National Consultative Commission on Human Rights, not involved in the trial, popular culture has given people a false idea of ​​what rapists look like and how they act. .

“It’s the idea of ​​a hooded man with a knife who you don’t know and who is waiting for you in a place that is not a private place,” she said, stressing that this “is to kilometers from the sociological and criminological reality of the world”. grated.”

Two-thirds of rapes take place in private homes and, in the vast majority of cases, the victims know their rapist, Lafourcade said.

It can sometimes be difficult to reconcile the facts with the personalities of the accused, described by their loved ones as loving, generous and attentive companions, brothers and fathers.

Cyril B.’s older sister, in tears, told the court: “He’s my brother, I love him. He’s not a bad person. Her partner insisted he wasn’t “macho” and never forced her to do anything sexually she wasn’t comfortable with.

Although Lafourcade does not believe that “all men are rapists,” as some believe in the trial, she said that unlike the #MeToo accusations that have ensnared French celebrities, the Pelicot affair “makes us understand that ‘actually rapists can be anyone.’

“For once, they are not monsters, they are not serial killers on the fringes of society. These are men who look like the ones we love,” she said. “In this sense, there is something revolutionary.”