Friday briefing: Will the Gisèle Pelicot case finally change how we view violence against women?

Good morning.

Dominique Pelicot, described as one of France’s worst sex offenders, has been sentenced alongside 50 other men who he recruited to rape his wife, Gisèle Pelicot. Dominique, who was given the maximum sentence possible of 20 years in prison, had been drugging and raping his wife for a decade before he was caught. The scale of the horror and depravity of this case has shocked the world, and reignited conversations around consent and sexual violence.

Gisèle did something highly unusual in cases like these: she waived her right to anonymity. The trial was held in public – she said she was testifying “for all women” who had been assaulted while drugged and to ensure that “no woman suffers this”. “I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” she said. “They regarded me like a rag doll, like a garbage bag.” She told the court that rape was not a strong enough word to describe what had happened to her; she said it was torture.

The 72-year-old’s choice to go public has turned her into a feminist icon for, as she describes it, making “shame swap sides” from the victim to the rapist. Throughout the trial, crowds cheered her every single day. Outside the packed courtroom yesterday in Avignon, south-eastern France, Gisèle said the trial was “a very difficult ordeal” and expressed “profound gratitude” for the outpouring of support she has received.

Things are possibly not over for Dominique, however. Investigators in Nanterre, near Paris, have reopened two cold cases from the 1990s, and placed Dominique under formal investigation, raising the question of whether he has been a serial offender for decades.

For today’s newsletter, I spoke with the Guardian’s Paris correspondent, Angelique Chrisafis, about the details and impact of this horrifying case. That’s right after the headlines.

Five big stories

1. Middle East | Israel has launched widespread airstrikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, killing at least nine people in the port city of Hodeidah, and threatened more attacks against the group, which has launched hundreds of missiles at Israel over the past year.

2. Water | Water bills in England and Wales will rise by 36% over the next five years, as suppliers were accused of forcing struggling households to pay for years of underinvestment to fix leaky pipes and cut pollution.

3. Diplomacy | Peter Mandelson is set to become Britain’s next ambassador to the US, the first time a politician has been appointed to the role for almost half a century.

4. Climate crisis | Potential new North Sea oil and gas fields with early stage licences from the UK would emit as much carbon dioxide as British households produce in three decades. The finding has led to calls to the government to reject demands from fossil fuel producers for the final permits needed to allow their operations to go ahead.

5. Russia | Vladimir Putin said the war in Ukraine had made Russia “much stronger” and denied that the fall of his key ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria had hurt Moscow’s standing, as he held a marathon year-end press conference and television call-in seeking to project confidence at home and abroad.

In depth: They were otherwise ordinary men – journalists, drivers, councillors, fathers

Gisèle moved to Mazan, an idyllic village in the south of France, with Dominique in 2013. The pair have been together since the early 1970s, and have three children and seven grandchildren.

Not long after their move, Gisèle began dealing with inexplicable health problems. She was losing weight, her hair was falling out and she had developed gynaecological problems. When she started experiencing blackouts and memory loss, she worried her symptoms could be due to dementia or a brain tumour. In truth, her symptoms resulted from the concoction of drugs that her then husband was putting in her food and drink.

Dominique’s crimes were uncovered by police after he was initially arrested for filming upskirting videos in a supermarket. Officers then searched his electronic devices and home. They found a hard drive that held 20,000 images and videos, documenting the crimes that he facilitated and participated in – in a file titled “abuse”.

When the police showed her what she had been subjected to, Gisèle initially did not recognise the people in the video. When she did: “Everything caved in, everything I built for 50 years.” Many people are asking how this could happen – though there are no simple answers, Angelique wrote a sobering feature chronicling how Dominique came to be such a prolific predator.

The trial

The highly publicised trial has been “very intense and eye-opening,” Angelique says. “It was an exceptional case because usually this type of case would be held behind closed doors, and we would not see any of the detail or evidence.”

The abuse began in 2011 and ended in 2020. On Dominique’s laptop the police found messages on Skype where he invited other men to abuse his wife. He found these men on an internet chatroom that has since been closed down, chillingly called “Without her knowledge”.

Thirty of the men on trial claim they thought that Gisèle had consented and that the whole situation was a part of some elaborate roleplay. Prosecutors, however, said that “she was in a state of torpor closer to a coma than sleep”, induced by a mix of sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication, and that this “didn’t seem to dissuade the participants, none of whom spoke to Gisèle Pelicot or sought her consent”.

Gisèle’s legal team successfully pressed for the videos to be shown in court, arguing it would push back against the line of defence that the men had not meant to rape Gisèle because they did not realise she was unconscious.

“Each time an accused man said ‘I didn’t do this’, video evidence was produced by the prosecutors and we were sort of taken into the bedroom in this house to see the truth of how these men were behaving and the truth of the rapes which Gisèle Pelicot suffered through,” Angelique says.

“Monsieur Tout le Monde”

The French court found 46 of the accused guilty of rape, two guilty of attempted rape, and two guilty of sexual assault. Their ages ranged from 26 to 74 and their lives were equally varied. They have become known as “Monsieur Tout le Monde” – Mr Everyman – because of how ordinary they otherwise are. They include a prison warden, a nurse, a journalist, a councillor, a soldier, lorry drivers and farm workers. Many are fathers – one was in the process of adopting a child. Another, who was found guilty of aggravated rape and sentenced to 10 years, missed the premature birth of his daughter while at the Pelicots’ house. Angelique detailed the profiles and testimony of all of these men in this gripping piece.

Most of the men denied the allegations against them. Some argued that it could not be rape because the husband consented, others said it had not occurred to them to ask for Gisèle’s consent, or argued that they did not really know what consent was, or that they had not intended to rape her, and therefore are not rapists. Some went further and said that they too were victims of Dominique.

A turning point?

Throughout the trial, Gisèle was “extremely calm and strong”, Angelique says. She attended court every day and was met every time with a cheering crowd who were there to show their solidarity and support.

Campaigners have said that this is a historic trial – there will be a before and after, they say. Legislative change is probably not imminent, however, as France’s government is in a state of political crisis – there have been two prime ministers during the course of the four-month trial. “So we will have to wait to make sure that the promises that were made by politicians during the trial for better support for survivors, better testing, more awareness on drug-assisted rape will actually happen,” Angelique says.

Even if nationwide legal change will take time, this trial has undoubtedly turbocharged discussions about consent, drugging and sexual violence not just in France but around the world.

“Gisèle Pelicot has said she’s 72, she doesn’t know if there’s time left in her lifetime to recover from what she’s lived through, but she really wants to change things for future generations,” Angelique says. “She always said she was determined to change society, to open the country’s eyes to what she called a macho, patriarchal culture, and tell the world that a rapist is not necessarily a stranger waiting in a car park late at night but it could be someone in your own home.”

Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In France, the France Victimes network can be contacted on 116 006. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html

What else we’ve been reading

• I’m a day late to it, but I absolutely loved Mark Blacklock’s long read, which unravels a confounding mystery: why does the Samuel Smith brewery keep so many of its pubs closed – and why is the stupendously wealthy chair, Humphrey Smith, so secretive about it? Archie

• At one point everyone was scared that cinemas would never recover from the pandemic slump. But now people are back in theatres, and they want to up the ante. Adrian Horton takes a look at the rise of experiential cinema. Nimo

• Keir Starmer is meant to be Nigel Farage’s political antithesis. So why is it so difficult to tell them apart? Aditya Chakrabortty’s column is very good on the risks of Britain’s progressive leader ceding so much rhetorical ground to Reform. Archie

• Black women are the only group in the US to consistently and overwhelmingly vote Democrat: Gloria Oladipo explains what’s behind the loyalty. Nimo

• Nils Pratley has a lucid piece on Ofwat’s decision to allow water bills to go up by an average of 36%, and why investors at Southern and Thames who wanted even more should make their peace with it. Archie

Sport

Football | A frenetic match in which both goalkeepers committed grievous errors ended with Tottenham surviving to reach the semi-finals of the Carabao Cup, outscoring Manchester United 4-3. Dominic Solanke bagged a brace.

Football | Wolves have confirmed the appointment of Vítor Pereira as their head coach on an 18-month contract. He has joined from the Saudi Pro League club Al-Shabab as the successor to Gary O’Neil, who was sacked on Sunday.

Formula One | New Zealander Liam Lawson has been confirmed as Sergio Pérez’s replacement at Red Bull for next season. It was announced on Wednesday that the Mexican driver had lost his seat after a disappointing year, and four years as Max Verstappen’s teammate.

Something for the weekend

Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read, play and listen to right now

TV
Wham!: Last Christmas Unwrapped | ★★★★☆
What a big-hearted winter warmer this documentary turns out to be. This hour-long special promises an in-depth look at one of the most successful Christmas songs of all time – though, curiously, it wasn’t until last year, 39 years after its initial 1984 release, that it finally became Britain’s festive No1. Much like the podcast Song Exploder, this documentary pulls the song and the video apart, discussing how they were written and made, before analysing their cultural impact. All fascinating, particularly for fans, but even fans may be surprised at how intimate and lovely the conversations about George Michael are here. Rebecca Nicholson

Film
Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl | ★★★★☆
Forget Tom Cruise riding his motorbike off a cliff in Mission: Impossible. Wallace and Gromit are on a comfy narrowboat teetering on the edge of the Pontcysyllte aqueduct, having defiantly chucked a bunch of boots at the villain … weapons which, gloriously, have the sole purpose of facilitating a gag about something getting “rebooted”. Nick Park’s immortal creations return in the first Wallace and Gromit adventure for 16 years, a stop-motion animated sequel to the Oscar-winning 1993 short The Wrong Trousers. It’s exciting, ingenious, funny and an unmissable Christmas treat. Peter Bradshaw

Game
Mouthwashing | ★★★★☆
Mouthwashing is a difficult but engrossing experience, a work of surreal horror invoking the cinema of David Lynch and Dario Argento, but also extremely functional as a game, or at least a study of what games are and what they want us to do. That titles like this are still being made and have global distribution is one of the few bright spots in a depressing year for the games business. Book yourself in for a flight as soon as possible – you will and won’t regret it … Keith Stuart

Music
Angel Olsen: Cosmic Waves Volume 1 | ★★★☆☆
Olsen’s last album was 2022’s country-tinged, grief-wrought Big Time; a stopgap EP, Forever Means, came out in 2023. Cosmic Waves Volume 1 feels like the work of an artist buying more time, but in a good way – investing in community via her own bijou label. This compilation amplifies five lesser-known artists and provides a welcome instalment of Olsen’s classic, haunted balladeering. A “compilation reimagined as a dialogue”, Cosmic Waves showcases those five acts on the A-side, with Olsen covering one of each artists’ tracks on the B-side. Her selections centre mostly on LA, and zigzag from the spirited, goth grunge of Poppy Jean Crawford (Glamorous) to the Talking Heads bent of Coffin Prick, the most sonically adventurous player here. Kitty Empire

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