Gisèle Pelicot (71 years old), the victim of hundreds of rapes orchestrated by her husband, Dominique Pelicot (71 years old), drugging her, between 2011 and 2020, in their family home, in Mazan (Vaucluse), has finished her statements in the trial that instructs that historical scandal by declaring: «We have witnessed the process of cowardice. “Society must change its view towards sexual violence.”
The process began on September 2, before the Court of Avignon. For two and a half months, forty-nine of the hundred men who raped Gisèle Pelicot once or several times, during a short decade, gave statements between cynicism, horror and cowardiceassuming to varying degrees violations organized by the husband.
On Monday, David, one of the three children of the Pelicot couple, declared to his father: “If you have any humanity left, tell the truth about what you did to my sister and my son.” David is convinced that his father raped his wife and son. Carolina, the daughter, had repeated, shortly before: “I suspect that my father raped me, as he did with my mother.”
In her day, at the beginning of the historic trial, Gisèle Pelicot personally wanted the sessions to be public, asking that her husband’s recordings be made known, “immortalizing”, with her telephone and a video camera, the rape sessions of a hundred strangersfrom 17 to 74 years old, of very diverse professions and national and ethnic origins.
Those sessions uncovered the most absolute horror, recorded by the “organizer” of his wife’s rape sessions. After that unique and exceptional experience, Gisèle Pelicot declared this Tuesday: «I have heard many horrors, lies, unacceptable things. Horrible lies have been told about me…I didn’t understand what was happening, some rapists have said, how horrible, how much misery. «For me, Mrs. Pelicot continued, this process is that of cowardice, unheard of cowardice. Everything has been said. “The time has come for this patriarchal and sexist society to change its outlook on rape and sexual violence against women.”
Feminist heroine
Perhaps this is the peak moment of the process. For weeks now, Gisèle Pelicot has been in the pantheon of great heroines of all women’s causes, showing signs of very unusual bravery. And the testimonies of solidarity and sympathy, national and international, have multiplied.
Assuming the fatigue, the boredom, the horror, the most intimate and profound pain, Mrs. Pelicot makes her intimate and public assessment of her tragedy. A husband fallen into the abyss of the most terrifying horrors of the human soul. And a society that discovers this immense tragedy, inviting awareness.
Dominique Pelicot will also have to give a statement. And prosecutors should present their requests between Tuesday afternoon and all day Wednesday, if unforeseeable incidents do not occur. The process will then be ready for a sentence, expected by the end of the year.
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