Brave, heroic, courageous, inspirational—so many words have been used to describe Gisèle Pelicot over the past few weeks, and yet they all seem a bit inadequate, don’t they?
I, for one, can’t fathom the mental resilience the 72-year-old Frenchwoman has needed to sit in an Avignon courtroom every day for eight weeks, as the details of the horrific sexual assaults against her are made public. Little wonder she’s arrived each day to applause and cheers. The phrase “watershed moment” is grossly overused, but I do wonder whether we’re witnessing one right now.
So many of us will have wondered whether we could show the same strength in her shoes—hopefully we’ll never have to find out. But one thing’s for sure: we should all be in awe of this woman and her determination to move the dial on how we talk about sexual assault, selflessly and entirely against the odds.
The facts of her case are now well known, but no less nightmarish for it. Gisèle’s husband, Dominique, stands accused of drugging his wife’s meals and inviting men he’d met online into their bedroom to rape her. She had no idea until the police knocked on her door four years ago, armed with video evidence of the assaults that they’d found on her husband’s devices after he was caught upskirting women in a supermarket.
Alongside her husband, 50 other men—who mostly live less than 40 miles from their village—are on trial, accused of raping Gisèle. Many deny knowing she was unconscious or claim they thought she was in on the “game.”
Until this week, Gisèle Pelicot hadn’t addressed the court directly, but her actions had already said so much. Her refusal to hold the trial in private meant that the men accused of raping her haven’t been able to cower behind closed doors, protected from public view. Her decision to waive her anonymity has done so much to shatter the idea that victims should carry the burden of shame around with them.
“When you’re raped there is shame and it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them,” she told the court on Wednesday, when she at last took to the stand. “I wanted all women victims of rape—not just when they have been drugged, rape exists at all levels—I want those women to say: Madame Pelicot did it, we can do it too.”
