Hundreds of protesters gathered across France on Saturday in support of Gisèle Pélicot, the woman whose husband drugged her and invited more than 80 men to rape her at their home over the course of a decade.
Feminist groups organised about 30 protests in cities including Paris and Marseille. Demonstrators also gathered in Brussels. At Place de la République in Paris, protesters held placards with messages of support for victims of sexual violence. One read: “Gisèle for all. All for Gisèle.”
The case of the 72-year-old, who was repeatedly assaulted while unconscious, shocked the world. Her husband, Dominique, 71, who has pleaded guilty, is being tried with 50 other men accused of raping her.
Gisèle Pélicot has been widely praised for her courage in saying the trial should be held in public, rather than behind closed doors.
The men who allegedly raped her were aged between 26 and 73 when they were arrested and include a local councillor, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, a soldier, a firefighter and a civil servant. Many were the couple’s neighbours in the small town of Mazan, near Avignon, in southern France.
It was only after a security guard caught Dominique Pélicot filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket and he was arrested that the crime he committed against his wife of 50 years was discovered. Detectives found a file labelled “Abuses” on a USB drive. It contained about 20,000 images and films of his wife being raped up to 100 times. A video obtained by Paris Match shows him filming up a woman’s skirt in 2020. The security guard can be heard saying: “You’re disgusting… You’re lucky. If it was my mother I’d rip your head off.”
At the trial in Avignon, Gisèle Pélicot said police had “saved my life”. When showed evidence of the rapes, she said, her world “fell apart”. She told the court the word rape was not strong enough; it was “torture”.
The couple were married at 21 and had three children and seven grandchildren. “We weren’t rich, but we were happy,” she said. “Even our friends said we were the ideal couple.”
Several of the men whom Pélicot, a retired electrician, recruited on an online chatroom insist they did not know his wife had been drugged and thought the sex was consensual.
At a protest in Marseille, Martine Ragon, 74, said she was there to “denounce rape culture”. She told journalists: “This well-publicised trial will allow people to speak out about it, to raise awareness.” Her partner, Gérard Etienne, 75, added: “We need to support women who are treated like this. When you hear some of the testimonies, you wonder how a man can treat a woman like that.”
Photographer Pedro Campos, 21, agreed: “It’s shocking… because we see that the [men on trial] are a bit like Mr Everyman. It goes against the idea that there is only one type of rapist.”
Deborah Poirier, 36, protesting in Nice, said the attack was “the height of horror, crystallising everything that should never happen again”.
The trial, scheduled to last four months, was suspended on Thursday, as it entered its second week, after Dominique Pélicot was taken ill on the day he was to be cross-examined. It will reopen on Monday, but presiding judge Roger Arata has warned that the hearing may have to be postponed if Pélicot remains unable to give and hear evidence.
