After eight weeks of dirty, atrocious, obscene testimonies, Gisèle Pelicot, the woman whom her husband drugged to photograph and film how she was raped by a hundred strangers, in the marital home, in Mazan (Vaucluse), has made a moral turn process that judges these crimes. The husband, Dominique, and two dozen of the rapists, their wives and relatives took advantage of their statements before the Avignon Court, to try to defend themselves in a very equivocal way: the husband repeated proclamations of “love”; wives and daughters of the rapists affirmed that their husbands were “honest fathers of families”; The rapists who confessed their sexual violence tried to “excuse themselves” by stating that they “believed” that husband and wife shared the “debauchery”… This succession of statements created a very equivocal climate. Faced with such an evolution of a historic process, the presidency of the Court once again requested the testimony of the drugged and raped victim, to hear her responses to Dominique Pelicot and fifty rapists. Warmly applauded, at the door of the Court, Gisèle Pelicot began her statement on October 23 in a serious tone, very serene, calm, apparently, without the dark glasses that he had worn for weeks, when the process took a turn of rare obscene brutality. And he began by remembering a serious, brave and very painful personal decision: «For eight weeks I have suffered a horrible hell. I have been raped a hundred times. I have suffered an immeasurable betrayal. My life has sunk into nothingness. I wanted to take my husband and my family upwards, towards the light. ‘Gisele, we women thank you’ is read on the walls of Avignon these days of trial. ‘Since this trial began I have been hurt, seriously.’ , the victim continued, adding: «I made the decision to refuse the closed door of this process. I had nothing to blame myself for. I suffered a hundred rapes: it was difficult to make that decision. The dissemination of the videos and photographs, taken by the father of my children, was something difficult and painful for me: but it allowed us to know the reality.” After that confession of a very hard decision to bear, that of seeing, in public, the videos and photographs taken by a husband who drugged her to make her raped by strangers, Mrs. Pelicot addressed the father of her children in these terms: «Dominique, we lived together for fifty years. I was a happy woman. We have three children and seven grandchildren. You were a good man to me. I repeated on many occasions that I had been very lucky to find you. When I started having problems you didn’t abandon me. You accompanied me to the gynecologist. I don’t understand how you could betray me like that, how you could get those individuals into my room. It is an immeasurable betrayal. I thought I would end my days with a man. Today, my life has fallen into nothing. I always wanted to take you to the top, to the light. You chose the underbelly of the human soul.” After responding to the father of her children in those morally implacable terms, Mrs. Pelicot addressed the wives, children and sisters, who have intervened in the process to try to defend “honest parents” who raped a drugged woman while her husband photographed sadomasochistic scenes. All the witnesses for the rapists’ defense had witnessed the “spectacle” of rape and sexual violence, filmed and photographed, presented in the trial as “testimony.” Avoiding this tragic reality, the rapists’ defense repeated itself, for several weeks, in very different terms. A wife claimed that her husband “was not a rapist.” Some daughter burst into tears saying that she loved and “believed” her father. Several alleged attackers stated that they had believed in the “complicity” of a “libertine couple.” MORE INFORMATION news Yes Widows who do not have a place in the new Family Law news Yes Widows who do not have a place in the new Family Law Given these floods of testimonies, Mrs. Pelicot addressed these wives, companions and family members this Wednesday with serene dignity, in this way: “I do not speak with hatred or anger” “To those women, mothers, sisters, who say that their husband, their partner, your brother, is an exceptional man, I would like to tell you that I also had an exceptional man. The rapist is not only the one who is on a dark street, he is also the man who lives with his family… When you have been raped, you feel shame. It is they, those parents, who should feel ashamed. For me, they are still rapists. They have not understood or integrated what rape is. Now they take out their handkerchiefs and cry. It would have been necessary for them to be questioned before arriving at this court. I do not speak with hatred or anger. I express my will and determination, so that this society changes.”
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