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Gisèle Pelicot said after 51 men were found guilty on Thursday in the drugs and rape trial that made her a feminist hero that the ordeal had been “very difficult” and expressed her support for other victims of sexual violence.
“We share the same struggle,” he said in his first words after the court in the southern French city of Avignon handed down prison sentences ranging from three to 20 years in the shocking case that shocked France and sparked a national reckoning on the plague of rape culture.
Pelicot, whose courage and stoicism have made her an internationally recognized figure and an icon for many women, said she was thinking about her grandchildren after enduring more than three months of court hearings addressing the nearly decade of rape and other abuse inflicted on her for her now ex-husband and his accomplices.
“I also led this fight for them,” she said of her grandchildren.
The court sentenced her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, to 20 years in prison for drugging her, raping her and allowing other men to rape her while she was unconscious.
The sentence was the maximum possible under French law. He was found guilty of all charges against him. At 72, it could mean he will spend the rest of his life in prison. You will not be able to request early release until at least two-thirds of the sentence has been served.
Roger Arata, chief judge of the Avignon city court in southern France, told Pelicot to appear for the sentencing. After it was handed to him, he sat down again and cried.
Arata read one after another the verdicts against Pelicot and the other 50 men tried in the case.
“You are therefore found guilty of aggravated rape of the person of Ms. Gisèle Pelicot,” the judge said as he reviewed the names of the long list of defendants.
Gisèle Pelicot sat on one side of the courtroom, facing the defendants and occasionally nodded her head as the verdicts were announced. It took Arata just over an hour to deliver the guilty verdicts and sentences.
Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro, said she will consider a possible appeal, but also expressed hope that Gisèle Pelicot will find solace in the court’s rulings.
“I wanted Ms. Pelicot to be able to come out of these hearings in peace and I believe the verdicts will contribute to this relief for Ms. Pelicot,” he said.
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Of the 50 accused of rape, only one was acquitted but found guilty of aggravated sexual assault. Another man was also found guilty of the sexual assault charge for which he was tried, meaning that all 51 defendants were found guilty in one way or another.
In a side room where relatives of the defendants watched the proceedings on television screens, some burst into tears and gasped as the sentences were revealed.
Protesters gathered in front of the court followed the proceedings on their phones. Some read the verdicts and applauded when they were announced inside. Some carried oranges as a symbolic gift for defendants heading to prison.
Prosecutors had asked that Dominique Pelicot receive the maximum sentence of 20 years and sentences of 10 to 18 years for others tried for rape.
But the court was more lenient than prosecutors expected, and many were sentenced to less than a decade in prison.
For the defendants, except Dominique Pelicot, the sentences ranged from three to fifteen years in prison, with partial suspension of the sentence for some of them. Arata told six defendants that they were now free, taking into account the time they had already spent in custody awaiting trial.
Dominique Pelicot admitted that for years he drugged his then-wife of 50 years so that he and strangers he recruited online could abuse her while he filmed the assaults.
The nearly decade-long ordeal inflicted on Gisèle Pelicot, now a 72-year-old grandmother, in what she thought was a loving marriage and her courage during the painful trial have transformed the retired power company worker into a feminist hero. of the nation. .
The trial, which lasted more than three months, galvanized anti-sexual violence activists and spurred calls for tougher measures to eradicate rape culture.
All of the defendants were accused of having participated in Dominique Pelicot’s sordid rape and abuse fantasies that were acted out at the couple’s nursing home in the small Provençal town of Mazan and elsewhere.
Dominique Pelicot testified that he hid tranquilizers in the food and drink he gave his then-wife, knocking her unconscious so deeply that he could do whatever he wanted to her for hours.
One of the men was convicted and sentenced to 12 years in prison not for assaulting Gisèle Pelicot but for drugging and raping his own wife, with the help and drugs of Dominique Pelicot, who was also found guilty of raping the wife. of that man.
The five judges voted on their rulings in a secret ballot, with a majority vote for convictions and sentences.
Activists against sexual violence had hoped for exemplary prison sentences and saw the trial as a possible turning point in the fight against sexual violence and the use of drugs to subdue victims.
Gisèle Pelicot’s bravery in waiving her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual abuse and successfully pushing for hearings and shocking evidence (including videos) to be heard in open court has fueled conversations both nationally in France and among families, couples and groups of friends on how to better protect women and the role men can play in achieving that goal.
“Men are starting to talk to women – their girlfriends, mothers and friends – like they have never done before,” said Fanny Foures, 48, who joined other women from the feminist group Les Amazones to post messages of support to Gisèle Pelicot on the walls surrounding Avignon before the verdict.
“At first it was awkward, but now real dialogues are happening,” he said.
“Some women are realizing, perhaps for the first time, that their ex-husbands raped them or that someone close to them committed abuse,” Foures added. “And men are starting to take into account their own behavior or complicity, things they have ignored or failed to act on. It is heavy, but it is generating changes.”
A large banner that activists hung on a city wall in front of the courthouse read: “MERCI GISELE” – thank you Gisèle.
Dominique Pelicot first came to the attention of police in September 2020, when a supermarket security guard caught him surreptitiously filming women’s skirts.
Police later found his library of home images documenting years of abuse inflicted on his wife: more than 20,000 photos and videos in total, stored on computer drives and cataloged in folders marked “abuse,” “his rapists,” “ just one night” and others. securities.
The abundance of evidence led the police to the other accused. In the videos, researchers counted 72 different abusers, but could not identify all of them.
Although some of the defendants, including Dominique Pelicot, admitted they were guilty of rape, many did not, even in the face of video evidence. The hearings sparked a broader debate in France over whether the country’s legal definition of rape should be expanded to include specific mention of consent.
Some defendants argued that Dominique Pelicot’s consent also extended to his wife. Some tried to excuse their behavior by insisting that they had no intention of raping anyone when they responded to the husband’s invitations to come to his house. Some blamed his door, saying he tricked them into thinking they were participating in a consensual kink.
