Her husband is accused of inviting strangers to sexually assault her while she was drugged and unconscious. The trial has transformed the way France discusses sexual violence.
Like most days at the courthouse in Avignon, France, Gisèle Pelicot arrived to the cheers of a crowd of mostly female supporters on Wednesday.
“I express neither my anger nor my shame,” she told the court, taking the stand again in a trial that has gripped France and sparked deep discussions about sexual violence and the definition of rape in the criminal code. “I am expressing a desire to change society.”
For weeks, she remained silent as one defendant after another spoke before the judges. Some 51 men are on trial, most charged with aggravated rape against Ms. Pelicot, a 71-year-old grandmother who prosecutors say was drugged repeatedly by her husband of 50 years and then served up to the men. She was unconscious during the rapes, and says she has suffered lapses in her memory and hair and weight loss as a result of being repeatedly drugged.
Ms. Pelicot told the court on Wednesday that listening to the testimony over the past weeks had made her feel violated again. But she said she felt she has a higher purpose. “I want victims of rapes to tell themselves, ‘If Ms. Pelicot did it, so can we.’ I don’t want the victims to feel shame, they are the ones who should feel shame,” she said, referring to the defendants.
Dominique Pelicot, her ex-husband, told the court in September that he had begun drugging his wife so he could have sex with her in ways she would not agree to when lucid. He then met other men on a website and invited them to join him. Mr. Pelicot had been doing this for almost a decade until he was arrested in September 2020 for filming up the skirts of women shopping in a grocery store.
The police seized his electronic devices, including his laptop, before releasing him on bail. They found a trove of photographs and videos of Ms. Pelicot being sexually assaulted. Over the course of their investigation, the police identified more than 80 suspects but were able to track down and charge only 50 of them.
