Dominique Pelicot, a retired estate agent, is accused of drugging his wife Gisele and recruiting other men online over nine years to sexually assault her at their home. Pelicot has admitted rape. Fifty other men are on trial for alleged rape alongside him. But it is Gisele Pelicot, the victim, who has for many people become the focus of this horrifying story. Thousands have turned out in towns and cities across France to demonstrate in solidarity with her and against rape culture in France.
Gisele Pelicot has chosen to refuse the anonymity usually granted in rape cases, and attends the trial sessions in Avignon, in order she says to shift the shame and humiliation often faced by victims of sexual violence on to the alleged perpetrators. Angelique Chrisafis, the Guardian's France correspondent, has reported on such unspeakably violent events as the Bataclan massacre in 2015 and the Bastille Day terror attack in Nice in 2016. Yet, covering the Pelicot case stood out, she told me, because of the scale of the sexual violence.
Gisele Pelicot wanted the trial to be public to draw attention to the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse. That’s why she called for the lifting of restrictions on the screening of video evidence in the trial. Her lawyer said the shock wave of this public trial and public video evidence was necessary to show the true horror of rape.
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