Every two minutes, a woman is raped in France. But only 6% of sexual assault victims report the facts. And only 0.6% of these cases ended in a conviction, according to the French National Observatory of Violence against Women, with data from 2020 and 2021. One of the convictions that will appear in the 2024 figures will be that of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men for sexually assaulting Gisèle Pelicot. Numbers can be very compelling, but it is the stories that usually have the power to change the way we look, the causes we defend, the policies we demand. Whatever data the French observatory publishes next year, something has changed and it has done so thanks to one of those stories with names and surnames. And behind her, there are many more.
Gisèle Pelicot decided that the trial against her ex-husband and the other 50 men who, in connivance with him, raped her after supplying her with sleeping pills without her knowledge would be with open doors. Uncovered face. Full name. He said it in one of the trial sessions: he wanted shame to change sides. He thus took up the phrases of the French activist and lawyer Gisèle Halimiwhose accusation in a trial for rape of two women in 1974 turned out to be key for France to begin to change its outlook on sexual violence and in 1980 the law was passed that considered rape a crime.
In Spain, 37.3% of women who have suffered rape outside their relationship and did not seek formal help did so out of shame or embarrassment. “I didn’t want anyone to know” is also the reason why 12% of those who received physical and/or sexual violence from ex-partners did not go to the system for help. These are data from the last Violence Macrosurvey against Women, 2019. In some categories and in others, to a greater or lesser percentage, shame always appears.
Gisèle attended the trial with her head held high, and that was also how she spoke and responded to leading questions and comments that cast suspicion on her. Therefore, some will behave like her and others, differently. That is why not all women can be asked to be Giséle Pelicot. Because even with tons of evidence, the path is arduous – “this trial has been a very difficult test,” she said after the sentencing –, in other cases it is directly an uphill climb with a summit that is not in sight.
“I think about the unrecognized victims whose stories often remain in the shadows. “I want you to know that we share the same struggle,” she continued, as a way of making explicit all those stories that continue to be numbers – or that are not even numbers – because we do not know the protagonists nor did their cases ever reach a police station, a court. or a victim assistance center.
‘You are the rapist’
This Thursday, Gisèle not only arrived with her head held high at the courthouse where the verdict was going to be read, she also did so with a smile. This 72-year-old French woman has challenged the social stereotype of how a victim should be and behave: she is not young, she was not raped by a stranger, she has not limited herself to showing regret or sadness, but she has also expressed her anger, her indignation. , his gratitude, his strength, his forcefulness, his serenity. Because a woman who suffers sexual assault can be anyone, act in very different ways, need different things, have a life in which that aggression occupies one place or another, has one weight or another.
The phrase with which Gisèle addressed the people who have supported her during these weeks is more than a nice gesture: it shows to what extent telling, denouncing and facing a trial is a collective task and not just an individual one. Thanks to those people who waited for her at the doors of the courts to applaud her and thank her for her courage, the woman said, she found “the strength to return every day to face these long days in court.” She also appreciated the work of her legal representatives and the women’s association that has accompanied her.
Because Gisèle Pelicot is the name and face of a specific story that catalyzes a discontent, a protest, a demand: that France has to review and update its policies against sexist violence, its statistics, its care and prevention resources, their prejudices, the way in which society understands sexual violence. But Gisèle Pelicot did not come to that court with that determination solely by her own means or by her character.
It came for Gisèle Halimi and for the feminists who have been asking for years that France take more steps in the fight against gender violence. It came through that association that, like others, accompanies and supports women in their processes. came for The rapist is youby Lastesis, which traveled around the world from Chile. For the ‘Not one less’ of the Argentine women or for the enraged Mexican women marking statues to ask for justice for those murdered. For the survivor of ‘the pack’. For the feminist strikes. For those who speak at their neighborhood assemblies or stand up in a debate or participate in associations or write in a magazine. It came from that story that is being built among many and that allows a woman, one day, to take another step.
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