GISELE PELICOT HAS become a feminist icon over the course of a three-month trial that came to an end today when her ex-husband was found guilty of drugging her and inviting strangers to rape her for years.
The poise and courage Pelicot showed throughout the trial have seen her become a source of inspiration for victims of sexual abuse across France and around the world.
Refusing to be ashamed of her victimhood, Pelicot waived her right to anonymity and declared it was her abusers who should feel shame.
“I wanted all women who are rape victims to say to themselves: ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, so we can do it too’,” she told the court in October.
“It’s not us who should feel shame, but them,” she added.
As news of the trial spread, protests erupted across France to show support and fans started cheering her or even greeting her with flowers when she arrived in court.
Her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot, along with his 50 accomplices, was found guilty of aggravated rape and sentenced to 20 years in prison this morning.
Ahead of today’s verdicts, the 72-year-old made it onto the BBC’s 100 Women list for 2024, alongside fellow mass rape survivor and Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad and Hollywood actor Sharon Stone.
Pelicot in August obtained a divorce from her husband, who had confessed to the abuse after meticulously documenting it with photos and videos.
She has moved away from the southern town of Mazan where, in her own words, her husband Dominique Pelicot treated her like “a piece of meat” or a “rag doll” for years.
She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her former name as a married woman – the one passed on to some of her seven grandchildren.
In mid-September, she dropped her usual reserve to talk of her humiliation and her anger towards several lawyers who had made insinuations about her ordeal.
“Rape is rape,” she said.
In October, she said she was “broken” but determined to change society.
She again told the court last month it was time for a “macho, patriarchal” society to shift its attitude towards rape.
She said the marathon hearings were an examination of the “cowardice” of the men who took part in the assaults.
Many had argued they thought they were taking part in a couple’s fantasy after consent by proxy through her husband.
She expressed her anger that none of her abusers alerted the police about the rapes, which occurred between 2011 and 2020.
Several took part in the abuse six times.
Fifty men besides her 72-year-old ex-husband were on trial, including one who did not rape Gisele Pelicot but repeatedly abused his own wife with Dominique Pelicot’s help.
All 50 were found guilty today and received sentences ranging from three to 20 years in prison.
However, more than 20 other suspects remain at large as investigators had not managed to identify them before the start of the mass trial.
Gisele Pelicot was born on 7 December, 1952 in Germany, moving to France with her family when she was five.
When she was nine, her mother died of cancer at the age of 35.
Her older brother Michel died of a heart attack aged 43, before her 20th birthday.
She met Dominique Pelicot, her future husband and rapist, in 1971.
She had dreamt of becoming a hairdresser but instead studied to be a typist. After a few years doing temporary work, she joined France’s national electricity company EDF, ending her career in a logistics service for its nuclear power plants.
At home, she looked after her three children, then seven grandchildren.
After she retired, she enjoyed walking and singing in a local choir.
Only when the police caught her husband filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020 did she find out the true reason behind her troubling memory lapses.
Speaking outside the courthouse today after the verdicts came down, Gisele Pelicot said she did not regret opening the trial to the public.
“I wanted when I started on 2 September to ensure that society could actually see what was happening,” she said.
I never have regretted this decision.
“I have now faith in our capacity to collectively take hold of a future in which everybody, women and men, can live together in harmony, in respect and mutual understanding.”
With reporting from AFP
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