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
