Content Warning: This story contains descriptions of sexual abuse and gendered violence.
This is a story of shame being turned into hope. It is the story of the courage of Gisele Pelicot, which is forever etched into my imagination, as this diminutive 72 year old grandmother faces into the horror of discovering she was raped by at least 75 men so far identified by the French police, some strangers and others, her neighbours, invited by her husband of over 50 years, in a range of online chatrooms on his computer and phones.
Her husband Dominique experimented with chemical rape on Gisele, and became expert in drugging and raping her each night for almost a decade during 2010 – 2011. He invited other men to share the experience with him. They seem to be ordinary men, ranging from their 20s to their 70s, most of them denying their actions constituted rape, denying she hadn’t consented, her husband had reassured them, and following the instructions he gave them about their actions and living out their fantasies.
The trial of 51 men and her ex-husband has recently come to an end and all have received sentences (19 December 2021), but uncovering of this most appalling of crimes and abuse in her own home, started four years ago, when Dominique was caught filming a woman at the local supermarket and upskirting her. The woman pressed charges, and when the detectives started looking at Dominique’s camera, his two phones and then his computer, the abuse, manipulation both physical and mental, the coercion and violence was finally uncovered and came to an end in 2020.
Over 20,0000 videos and photos of his wife being raped by him and others were brought into the light. Dominique is one of the worst sexual predators in modern history and he did it through the little-known phenomenon of chemical submission – drug-facilitated rape.
The issues of betrayal, theft, violence, judgement, horror, shame, guilt, hopelessness, imagining the unimaginable, sacrifice and trauma, to name just a few, have been present in the profoundly shocking story of domestic violence.
What has transformed this story, however, is Gisele’s decision, an unusual and remarkable decision to waive her anonymity and open the trial to the public and the media as it began in September 2024.
Her legal team successfully pushed for the videos taken by Dominique to be show in court, arguing they would ‘undo the thesis of accidental rape’ – pushing back against the defence that the men had not meant to rape Gisele as they didn’t realise she was unconscious.
Gisele reflected on the time she would have to spend in court during the trial with the 54 men and her ex-husband on trial. She felt this would be as if she was in prison with them, sharing their guilt and captured, silenced by their narratives. She didn’t want this to happen again to any other woman. She didn’t want ignorance of the crime to continue as it is clear this crime has been shared and taught by Dominique with other men. The betrayal of trust, love, respect and the whole of their relationship with their three children was deliberate and unimaginable.
Gisele wanted shame to change sides, and it has.
Gisele was able to imagine a bigger story, a bigger, larger reason for her decision and choices, and to take herself there out of reach of the men who raped her.
I thought about Jesus when I first read the story and as I tracked its progress with absolute horror, through the French courts: first through the standard denials, rejection of the horror, the impact on others caught up in the story and Gisele being blamed, the pushback by her local mayor who tried to play it down and minimise the story, the revulsion and rejection of the women who were her neighbours, as the men came from a 50 km radius to rape Gisele meant it was her neighbours who too, were caught up in the nightmare.
I thought about the betrayal of Jesus by his friends, his neighbours and by family members and those who had previously supported him but then became absent when his teaching and lifestyle became too challenging for the status quo.
I thought about those with power who looked to blame others, to push the consequences elsewhere out of sight and to protect themselves from any untoward blowback: Pilate comes to mind, and the High Priest and Council.
I thought about the humiliations inflicted upon Jesus, as he was stripped naked, beaten and pushed around, spat upon, dressed up and dressed down, as was Gisele.
I thought about his trial where everyone except Jesus was on trial but nobody could see it.
I thought about his sentence of death, to be immediately executed without appeal; the grief and horror of the sentence, and being hung on a cross for all to see, to jeer, to mock and hold in contempt.
I thought about the abandonment of Jesus, by those whom he trusted, with only a few women stepping forward to keep vigil and to keep the story going.
I thought about Jesus’ commitment and understanding of a much bigger story as he took himself to the cross and beyond it to resurrected life in spite of the evil determined to scapegoat him and assume all will be well afterwards – but only until the next time.
Jesus died so this behaviour, this belief, this fear, need never be acted upon again. He died, once for all, upon the cross. Gisele’s own crucifixion by Dominque and all those men, as she was repeatedly raped, pilloried and abused, now has Jesus in her story, as Jesus was always in her story, as it is clear they both see the bigger, the larger story of God, as resurrected people, where shame has changed sides and has no power over her or him.
Please know in my limited recounting of Gisele Pelicot’s story, I do not want to trivialise or imagine I could ever know or imagine this most unimaginable of offences held so tightly by men and released so powerfully by a woman in the retelling of her own story.
In the early days of the trial, Gisele Pelicot was asked whether she thought it was legitimate to think the men had been manipulated by her husband. She shook her head: ‘They didn’t rape me with a gun to their heads. They raped me in full conscience.’
Almost as an afterthought, she asked: ‘Why didn’t they go to the police? Even an anonymous phone call could have saved my life.’ ‘But not one did,’ she said after a pause. ‘Not a single one of them.’ They all made a choice not to go to the police. And as one said: he ‘didn’t want to waste the whole day at the police station.’
References:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7vvj8gymyo
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgx7xy77ydo
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