The shocking rape trial highlights the systematic struggles faced by victims of sexual abuse in France

AVIGNON – The trial of dozens of men accused of raping an unconscious woman whose husband drugged her repeatedly over nearly a decade has highlighted the difficulties victims of sexual violence can face in France.

Dominique Pelicot, 71, and his 50 co-defendants face up to 20 years in prison if convicted in a trial that has shocked the world and humiliated the French public.

Pelicot tearfully admitted in court that he was guilty of the charges brought against him and said all his co-defendants understood exactly what they were doing when he invited them to his home in Provence between 2011 and 2020 to have sex with the unconscious and without wants wife, who divorced him after she found out what he did to her.

Despite the evidence including meticulously archived photos and videos that Pelicot shot of the alleged rapes, some of the defendants’ lawyers have scrutinized Gisèle Pelicot’s private life and motives, even questioning whether she was truly unconscious during some of the meetings. Although they must defend their clients as best they can, the lawyers’ tactics have outraged sex abuse lawyers, who say the lawyers show that victim-blaming is alive and well in France.

“This trial is the trial of our society,” Nathan Paris, 27, who works in a youth shelter, said outside the Avignon court this week. Paris, himself a victim of sexual violence, has made the trip from Marseille several times since the trial began.

“The French population has evolved … and I feel that justice has not evolved in that time,” he said, vowing to return until the trial is over.

The co-defendants range in age from their 20s to their 70s and represent a cross-section of French men: there is a firefighter, a journalist, a nurse, a prison guard and a construction worker. Some are retired, others unemployed and many have families of their own. One knew he had HIV when he raped Gisèle Pelicot six times and chose not to wear a condom, according to police. She did not contract HIV, although she was found to have other sexually transmitted diseases, a medical expert testified.

Magali Lafourcade, a judge and secretary general of the National Consultative Commission for Human Rights, who is not involved in the trial, said the fight against sexual violence in France has improved slightly since the start of the #MeToo movement, which has brought down some of it. France’s most famous actors and film directors, among other notables. Women have always spoken out, but their voices are now being heard more, she said.

“For a very long time, we saw the rape and murder of women by men as something that belonged in the private sphere — we thought we shouldn’t interfere with people’s private lives,” Lafourcade said.

“There’s been a definite shift, if not a revolution, with that perception since #MeToo,” she added.

Civic groups have lobbied hard in recent years to get judges, politicians and the media to understand that sexual violence is not just a private matter, but a societal, political and financial one, Lafourcade said.

French President Emmanuel Macron has pledged to prioritize gender equality and combat violence against women. But France’s public policies are still lagging behind, and more resources and effort are needed to prosecute sex offenders, experts told The Associated Press.

Lawyers and analysts agree that in many ways the Pelicot trial is a slam dunk because of its abundance of highly incriminating evidence and the guilty plea of ​​the main defendant.

Gisèle Pelicot also defies the widespread stereotype in French society that women who are raped may have provoked their assailants by seeking the male gaze or by being reckless. She is a 70-year-old grandmother who was drugged and unconscious whenever she was assaulted, according to police.

“Most victims don’t have that,” said Celine Piques, spokeswoman for the feminist group Osez le Féminisme!, or Dare Feminism!, pointing out that 90 percent of women who say they’ve been raped don’t press charges because they don’t . I don’t think they’ll stand a chance. “In most cases, the victims’ words are questioned and the shame falls on them rather than the man who committed the rape.”

Piques said she was particularly shocked by questions about Gisèle Pelicot’s sex life, including “whether she was swinging or threesome when this woman was drugged and unconscious”.

Gisèle Pelicot showed remarkable calmness and stoicism during the trial, even in the most gruesome and explicit descriptions of the abuse she suffered. But she became exasperated on Wednesday when defense lawyers questioned her about the graphic images taken of her, which were shown in court for the first time. She agreed to their display because she said she hoped they would serve as “indisputable evidence”.

“I understand why rape victims don’t press charges,” Pelicot told the five judges after a lawyer asked if she was hiding any unusual sexual “tendencies.”

“I won’t even answer that question, which I find offensive,” she replied, her voice breaking.

She told the court that the first two weeks of the trial had been excruciating, saying: “From the moment I arrived in this courtroom I felt humiliated. I am treated like an alcoholic, an accomplice. … I heard it all.”

Pelicot has become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France and is seen as a hero to many victims because she gave up her anonymity, let the trial be public and came out openly in the media. She attended every day of the trial, where she sat in a room full of men accused of raping her.

But despite the sickening details that emerged during the trial, it did not stop some from downplaying the abuse, with the mayor of the small community where the Pelicoti family lived, Mazan, apologizing on Thursday for suggesting in a BBC interview that things would could have been worse because “no children were involved” and “no one died”.

Such rejection is pervasive in France’s justice system, Lafourcade said.

“We have a real problem with the treatment of sex offenders by the justice system, which is very painful for victims and has a chilling effect,” she said. “It discourages people from filing charges.”

Given how few cases are reported and how rarely those end in convictions, only a small fraction of attackers actually end up in prison, Lafourcade said.

“And to reduce a crime, it’s not the severity of the punishment that matters,” she added. “That’s the fact of being sure you’d get caught.”

Pelicot’s supporters believe she is making a difference by bravely standing up to the men accused of raping her, and that wider change is on the horizon.

“Before, we would never have questioned a lawyer and his line of defense,” said Paris, the youth shelter worker. “But today society is changing, people are monitoring what is happening and taking into account the suffering of others.”