Rokhaya Diallo: This trial has killed off the myth of the ‘monster’ rapist
One face and name dominated the streets of Paris on 23 November as the annual march marking International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women took place. Gisèle Pelicot’s image was everywhere – she is a new feminist hero.
A respectable, retired grandmother, whose husband Dominique sedated her, raped her and recruited dozens of other men to inflict an unimaginable amount of sexual violence on her over a decade, had come to embody the perfect victim. It should not be surprising, then, that Dominique Pelicot and all of his 50 co-defendants have now been found guilty, and that Pelicot himself has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Unlike the vast majority of the 110,000 people who face sexual violence in France every year, the fact that Gisèle Pélicot was drugged unconscious during these crimes meant she could not be unfairly accused of having somehow caused or provoked the rapes.
But the strength of one woman whose unspeakable fate has garnered international solidarity cannot mask the fact that most French women still face denial and dismissal daily when they allege sexual assault. Over the past decade, 86% of reports of sexual violence have been dropped, meaning that only 14% of cases have made it through to a trial. But even in those cases, the conviction rate is very low: only 13% of suspects in sexual violence cases face consequences.
The trial of Dominique Pélicot and the staggering variety of profiles of his co-defendants have shown to the world that there is no “type” when it comes to sexual violence. The myth of the pervert “monster” who assaults unknown women does not reflect the reality of rapes, most of which are committed by people known to the victim.
And reporting sexual violence does not mean that you will get support: 40% of women who file a complaint in France have reported that their treatment by the police or gendarmerie was poor.
If this trial and the verdict have prompted a national reckoning and introspection among men, it is up to the French government to take responsibility for making sure that every victim feels heard and validated.
In her statement after today’s verdict, Gisèle Pelicot said she has confidence “in our capacity collectively to find a better future where women and men alike can live together with mutual respect”. I hope she is right.
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Rokhaya Diallo is a French journalist, writer, film-maker, activist and Guardian columnist
Anne Bouillon: After Gisèle Pelicot, the women I represent are demanding public justice
This is a good day for French justice and for French society. The court did not have to hand down the severest possible sentences to make examples of the guilty, but rather the trial needed to be conducted in an exemplary way. I believe this objective has been achieved to perfection.
But after this verdict, what will remain of this extraordinary trial? The nature of the crimes that were committed was not in itself exceptional, it was the scale of them that was so harrowing. We were already well aware that women are in danger first in their own homes and that rape is perpetrated by ordinary men. In that sense, this trial has taught us nothing that we did not already know.
But it is the courage of Gisèle Pelicot that has forced us collectively to stop looking away. Now that the perpetrators have been convicted, what should we do?
Rape is a massive social and structural phenomenon. As a lawyer who spends most of my time representing victims of rape, I know that these cases are primarily heard in assize courts and that they are so extremely numerous, these courts are overwhelmed.
In practice, the perpetrators I see in court every day are just like the accused in the Mazan trial. What do they share? A belief that under certain circumstances they don’t need to restrain themselves when it comes to doing whatever they want to the body of an unconscious woman.
Victims, like Gisèle Pelicot, are ordinary women. And many of the women I represent in court have the same courage as Gisèle, refusing the option of having their cases heard in camera. After discussion, they frequently agree to go public and reject “huis clos” hearings. They want wider society to understand what they have endured and they know that justice carried out behind closed doors gives an advantage to the defendant.
Combatting rape in France does require possible legislative reform; we must seriously consider introducing the concept of consent into criminal law, which currently lacks it.
But that will not be enough. Only when our values have changed will women no longer be raped and men no longer become rapists. Consent must constitute the cornerstone of our romantic, marital and sexual relationships. Again and again, we must explain how respect for the physical integrity of each person is the very foundation of our relationships with others. To think that a simple legislative reform will resolve the issue is a delusion. Justice always intervenes too late.
Victoire Tuaillon: Our sexist culture still encourages these crimes
This is an important day for victims of sexual assault in France. But a lot of things still need to change. French society is only beginning to understand the normality of rapists: that rapists are men like any other, men who look like our brothers, our friends, our neighbours. Rape is a massive problem because it is such a common crime: at least 15% of women and 10% of children are victims, most of the time of men close to them, which means that there are a lot of rapists around.
The acts committed in Mazan have also acted as a magnifying glass on masculinity. They reveal an extreme version of what many men find exciting: penetrating the body of an unconscious woman. They reflect a belief that many share: that they have the right to do what they want with the body of “their” wife, that their wife “owes” them sex and that any “opportunity” for sexual intercourse is good to take.
In this way, rape is a performance of masculinity that says: as a man I am superior to you, so I have the right to do what I want with your body whenever I want; I consider you and treat you as an object.
For some men, the fact of having themselves been victims of sexual violence and/or serious abuse in childhood seems to encourage them to act out.
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The Pelicot trial should mean we collectively understand that rape happens because our entire culture encourages it; these crimes are rooted in a deeply sexist culture. We must address that problem at its root: which is to combat sexual inequality and take seriously all the clues and warning signs of sexual violence that attackers often indicate before committing such serious acts (sexist insults, harassment, and so on).
As for shifting the weight of shame from victims to aggressors, as Gisèle Pelicot sought by waiving her anonymity, there is at least a chance of that now because everybody saw clearly in Avignon that even when you are the “irreproachable victim”, like Gisèle, rape trials are excruciating. As the victim, you have to repeatedly endure defence lawyers’ odious questioning and the defendants’ infuriating explanations and denials.
Yet since 2017 (the beginning of the #MeToo movement) the number of rape complaints in France has multiplied. Women are coming out and denouncing what has happened to them. The problem is that France does not have the necessary public policies to properly respond to all of these allegations.
We need major public policy reform to combat sexual violence. We need emotional, relationship and sexual education classes for all students, from kindergarten to high school. We need a massive plan for the detection of child abuse and the care of child victims. We need training plans for all professions in contact with victims: caregivers, police officers, teachers, judges and lawyers. Finally, we must think about what we do with rapists, since sending them to unsanitary prisons without care or proper rehabilitation helps no one.
Sentencing is never the most important issue for me, because I don’t think prison is always the appropriate punishment. What counts for me today is that these rapists were all found guilty.
Cécile Simmons: Online platforms enabled this abuse
Dominique Pelicot used a now-closed online chat platform known for facilitating pornography and child sexual abuse to orchestrate his abuse. It was through this site and a forum called A son Insu (“Without her knowledge”) that he recruited men and circulated photos and videos of his wife. This website is only one of many, part of an online world rife with illegal, dehumanising and degrading sexual material that continues to evade legal accountability: campaigners begged French authorities to close Coco down for years, but to no avail.
Unmoderated online spaces such as these have become havens for abusers, enabling their violent fantasies against women. In South Korea, “humiliation” chat rooms on the encrypted platform Telegram have fuelled waves of sexually abusive deepfakes featuring women and girls. “Nudifying” apps are widely available and promise to make “men’s dreams” – presumably to use women’s bodies without their consent – “come true”.
To see digital technologies as mere facilitators of sexual violence would be a mistake: widely used “mainstream” platforms are actively shaping men’s behaviours and beliefs about women. Several men on trial in Avignon consumed a significant amount of online pornography – 90% of which features some form of abuse against women, according to the French gender-equality watchdog.
Gisèle Pelicot has spoken about her determination to change society. That change cannot happen without holding platforms to account for the harms they promote. From France’s arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov over alleged failures to stem child sexual abuse and other crimes, to the UK’s Online Safety Act’s criminalisation of sexually explicit deepfakes, there are signs that the era of unaccountability is over.
The frontiers of digital abuse keep moving: lawmakers and the government need to be ahead of the abusers, not playing catch-up.
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Cécile Simmons is an investigative researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) focusing on dis/misinformation, online subcultures, women’s rights and wellness
Clémentine Choubrac: Consent must be at the heart of our rape laws
The Pelicot rape trial has sent shock waves through French society, and revealed the urgent need for a change of paradigm – one that might already be under way. As the public prosecutor’s office made clear, one of the main concerns of the trial was to “fundamentally change the relationships between men and women”. In other words, to see rape culture being replaced by a culture of consent. For the French feminist collective #NousToutes, one way of doing this is to reform the criminal law, and introduce the concept of consent into the definitions of rape and sexual assault.
What is most interesting in this trial is that consent was at the heart of the closing speech given by the two lawyers from the public prosecutor’s office. Laure Chabaud claimed that “it is not possible any more, in 2024, to consider that, because she hasn’t said anything, [a woman] is consenting”. Jean-François Mayet also made this issue a central one by asking when the defendants had inquired about Gisèle Pelicot’s consent – his suggestion was: “not before, not while at it, not after”. This is a powerful indictment of a culture that has long normalised silence as consent, and a sign that the perception of rape by French society at large might already be evolving, as Gisèle Pelicot herself has called for.
The Pelicot trial has been a wake-up call, forcing French people to face the patriarchal nature of their society. Hopefully, it will strengthen the country’s nascent cultural change around rape, which is essential if we are to finally put an end to gender-based violence.
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Clémentine Choubrac is a translator and activist with the group #NousToutes
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