Today, a French court found Dominique Pelicot guilty of drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, for almost a decade, as well as recruiting almost 100 other men to rape her unconscious body. In a landmark case that garnered international attention, Dominique Pelicot was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. At age 72, he may spend the rest of his life there. All the defendants have 10 days to decide whether to appeal, and Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer said her client was considering this.
All of Pelicot’s 50 co-defendants were also found guilty. Forty-six of them were found guilty of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault. They were sentenced to between three and 15 years in jail, less than the four-to-18 years demanded by the prosecution. Several defendants had their prison time suspended and chief judge Roger Arata told six defendants they were now free, accounting for time already spent in detention while awaiting trial, reports The Associated Press. Some in the waiting crowd chanted “shame on the justice system,” after hearing the lighter-than-requested prison terms, reports Reuters.
Following the announcement of the verdict and prison sentences, Gisèle Pelicot, the woman who refused to stay anonymous in the trial, spoke first to other victims of sexual violence.
“I want you to know that we share the same fight,” she said. She told her supporters, “Your messages moved me deeply, and they gave me the strength to come back, every day, and survive through these long daily hearings,” reports the AP. “This trial was a very difficult ordeal.”
A broken family
Dominique Pelicot did not deny that he had drugged his wife and filmed her rapists. Ms. Pelicot did not find out about her now-ex-husband’s actions until police came to her in 2020 and showed her video evidence of the sexual crimes committed on her limp body. On Mr. Pelicot’s electronic devices, in a folder labeled “Abuses,” police found 20,000 videos and photographs dating back to 2011. From those, they identified 92 rapes, committed by 83 men, ranging in age from 26 to 74. They were able to identify 50 assailants.
The discovery of the violations of Ms. Pelicot broke the family. The Pelicot’s have three adult children who testified on behalf of their mother. David Pelicot, age 50, told the court in November that he was haunted by fears that his son had been abused by his grandfather. Their daughter, Caroline, told the court that she believes her father drugged her and sexually abused her. (Dominique Pelicot denies those allegations.) The youngest son, Florian, age 38, took the stand to say that his marriage had collapsed.
“It cost me a divorce and thousands of questions,” he said. He added, in anguish: “How do we rebuild ourselves? What’s the method? How do we do it?” reports The New York Times.
A role model
Having waived her right to anonymity, Gisèle has become an icon and role model for other women around the world. Her case, which has taken more than three months, has spurred serious talk of changes in French laws surrounding rape and other instances of sexual violence. Yaël Braun-Pivet, the president of France’s National Assembly, thanked Pelicot for her courage, which she said had helped break societal taboos surrounding sexual assault. Echoing Gisèle, she said that shame had changed sides. “The world is no longer the same thanks to you,” she wrote in a statement on X.
Speaking of her desire for the trial to be held publicly, Ms. Pelicot said: “I have never regretted this decision. I now have confidence in our ability to collectively seize a future in which each woman and man can live in harmony with respect and mutual understanding,” according to The Washington Post.
Writing for The New York Times, Vanessa Friedman says “Ms. Pelicot’s image has become one in a long line of images that have transcended a unique story to become visual shorthand for a collective turning point,” adding her to the list of iconic images like the young man in the white shirt in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square. “Rarely,” she writes, “has someone who was so literally objectified — turned into a rag doll for men to violate as they saw fit — been able to so fully take back control of her own objectification and turn it into a picture of empowerment.”