How one girl shook attitudes to rape in France

Warning: This story incorporates descriptions of sexual abuse.

Every morning, the queues started forming earlier than daybreak. Teams of ladies – all the time ladies – stood within the autumn chill on a pavement beside a busy ring street, outdoors Avignon’s glass and concrete courthouse.

They got here, day after day. Some introduced flowers. All wished to be in place to applaud Gisèle Pelicot as she walked, purposefully, up the steps and thru the glass doorways. Some dared to strategy her.

A number of shouted: “We’re with you, Gisèle,” and “Be courageous.”

Most then stayed on, hoping to safe seats within the courthouse’s public overflow room from the place they might watch proceedings on a tv display screen. They have been there to bear witness to the braveness of a grandmother, as she sat quietly in courtroom, surrounded by dozens of her rapists.

“I see myself in her,” mentioned Isabelle Munier, 54. “One of many males on trial was as soon as a buddy of mine. It is disgusting.”

“She’s grow to be a figurehead for feminism,” mentioned Sadjia Djimli, 20.

However they got here for different causes too.

Above all, it appeared, they have been in search of solutions. As France digests the implications of its largest rape trial, which is because of finish this week, it is clear that many French ladies – and never simply these on the courthouse in Avignon – are pondering two elementary questions.

The primary query is visceral. What may it say about French males – some would say all males – that fifty of them, in a single small, rural neighbourhood, have been apparently prepared to simply accept an off-the-cuff invitation to have intercourse with an unknown girl as she lay, unconscious, in a stranger’s bed room?

The second query emerges from the primary: how far will this trial go in serving to to deal with an epidemic of sexual violence and of drug-facilitated rape, and in difficult deeply held prejudices and ignorance about disgrace and consent?

Put merely, will Gisèle Pelicot’s courageous stand and her willpower – as she has put it, to make “disgrace swap sides” from the sufferer to the rapist – change something?

A protracted trial creates its personal microclimate and, over the previous weeks, an odd kind of normality developed inside Avignon’s Palais de Justice. Amid the TV cameras and the huddles of attorneys, the sight of dozens of alleged rapists – faces not all the time hidden behind masks – now not provoked the shock it had in the beginning.

The accused strolled round, chatting, joking, grabbing espresso from the machine or coming back from a café throughout the street, and, within the course of, one way or the other emphasised the core argument of their varied defence methods: that these have been simply common guys, a cross-section of French society, who have been in search of a “swinging” journey on-line and obtained caught up in one thing surprising.

“[That argument is] probably the most surprising factor about this case. It is harrowing to consider it,” says Elsa Labouret, who works for a French activist group, Dare to be Feminist.

“I feel most individuals in long-term relationships with males consider their companion as somebody reliable. However now there’s this sense of identification [with Gisèle Pelicot] for lots of ladies. Like, ‘okay, so that may occur to me’.

“These will not be prison masterminds,” she continues. “They only went on the web… So, it’s potential comparable issues are taking place in all places.” It is a view broadly held, but in addition broadly contested in France.

France’s Institute of Public Insurance policies launched figures in 2024 displaying that on common, 86% of complaints of sexual abuse and 94% of rapes have been both not prosecuted or by no means got here to a trial, within the interval between 2012 and 2021.

Ms Labouret argues that sexual violence occurs when sure males know that they “can get away with it. And I feel that is a giant motive why it is so rampant in France.”

All through the four-month trial, on the finish of every courtroom break, the accused would collect by the steel detector earlier than muscling previous the largely feminine press corps, additionally ready to enter the chamber. Inside, one after the other, the boys took their flip to share their accounts.

A court-appointed psychiatrist Laurent Layet testified that the accused have been neither “monsters” nor “bizarre males”. Some wept. A number of confessed. However most provided an array of excuses, with many saying they have been merely “libertines” – because the French put it – indulging a pair’s fantasies, and that that they had no method of understanding Ms Pelicot had not consented. Others claimed Dominique Pelicot had intimidated them.

There are only a few clear patterns or shared traits among the many 51 males on trial. They symbolize a large spectrum in society: three-quarters have kids. Half are married or in a relationship. Simply over 1 / 4 of them mentioned that they had been abused or raped as kids.

There is no such thing as a discernible grouping by age or job or social class. The 2 traits all of them share are that they are male, and that they made contact on a bootleg on-line chat discussion board referred to as Coco, identified for catering to swingers, in addition to attracting paedophiles and drug sellers. Based on French prosecutors, the positioning, which was shut down earlier this yr, has been cited in additional than 23,000 stories of prison exercise.

The BBC has discovered that 23 of these on trial – or 45% – had earlier prison convictions. Though the authorities don’t accumulate exact knowledge, in response to some estimates that’s roughly 4 occasions the nationwide common in France.

“There isn’t any typical profile of males who commit sexual violence,” concluded Labouret.

One one who has adopted the case extra carefully than most is Juliette Campion, a French journalist who has been in courtroom all through the trial to report for the general public broadcaster France Information. “I feel this case might have occurred in different international locations, after all. However I feel it says loads about how males see ladies in France… In regards to the notion of consent,” she says.

“Plenty of males do not know what consent truly is, so [the case] says loads about our nation, sadly.”

The Pelicot case is actually serving to to form the contours of attitudes to rape throughout France.

On 21 September, a gaggle of distinguished French males, together with actors, singers, musicians and journalists, wrote a public letter that was printed in Liberation newspaper, arguing that the Pelicot case proved that male violence “isn’t a matter of monsters”.

“It’s a matter of males, of Mr Everyman,” the letter mentioned. “All males, with out exception, profit from a system that dominates ladies.”

It additionally sketched out a “street map” for males searching for to problem the patriarchy, with recommendation comparable to “let’s cease pondering there’s a masculine nature that justifies our behaviour”.

Some consultants imagine the large public curiosity within the Pelicot case might already be producing advantages.

“This entire case is so helpful for everybody, for all generations, for younger boys, for younger women, for adults,” says Karen Noblinski, a Paris-based lawyer specialising in sexual assault circumstances.

“It has raised consciousness in younger individuals. Rape would not all the time occur in a bar, in a membership. It may possibly occur in our dwelling.”

However there may be clearly rather more work to be accomplished. I went to meet Louis Bonnet, who’s the mayor of the Pelicots’ dwelling village, Mazan, early on within the trial. Though he was unequivocal in condemning the alleged rapes, he acknowledged clearly and twice that he felt Gisèle Pelicot’s expertise had been overblown, and argued that as she’d been unconscious, she had suffered lower than different rape victims.

“Sure, I’m minimising it, as a result of I feel it might have been a lot worse,” he mentioned on the time.

“When there are children concerned, or ladies killed, then that could be very severe as a result of you may’t return. On this case, the household should rebuild itself. Will probably be exhausting, however nobody died. So, they will nonetheless do it.”

Bonnet’s feedback provoked outrage throughout France. The Mayor later issued a press release, expressing his “honest apologies”.

On-line, most of the debates across the case have centered on the controversial suggestion that “all males” are able to rape. There isn’t any proof to assist such a declare. Some males have pushed again in opposition to the argument, utilizing the hashtag #NotAllMen.

“We don’t ask different ladies to bear the ‘disgrace’ of ladies who behave badly, why ought to the mere reality of being a person qualify us to bear the disgrace?” requested one man on social media.

However the pushback was swift. Girls reacted to the #NotAllMen hashtag with anger and, typically, with particulars of their very own abuse.

“The hashtag has been created by males and utilized by males. It is a technique to silence the struggling of ladies,” wrote journalist Manon Mariani. Later, a male musician and influencer, Waxx, added his personal criticism, telling the hashtag customers to “shut up as soon as and for all. It isn’t about you, it is about us. Males kill. Males assault. Interval.”

Elsa Labouret believes French attitudes nonetheless want difficult. “I feel lots of people nonetheless suppose that sexual violence is horny or romantic or one thing that’s a part of the best way that we do issues right here [in France],” she argues.

“And it is so necessary that we query that and that we do not settle for this type of argument in any respect.”

In her small workplace simply behind the French parliament constructing on the River Seine, Sandrine Josso, an MP, has a four-letter swearword on a poster beside her desk. It captures the spirit of defiance and willpower that’s driving her marketing campaign in opposition to what’s identified in France as “chemical submission”, or drugging with a purpose to rape.

A yr in the past, in November 2023, she was at a celebration within the Paris house of a senator named Joel Guerriau. She claims that he put a drug in her champagne with the intention of raping her. Geuerriau has denied making an attempt to drug her, blaming a “dealing with error” and telling investigators that the glass had been contaminated a day earlier.

In a press release, his lawyer has mentioned: “We’re miles away from the obscene interpretation that one may infer from studying preliminary stories within the press.” A trial is anticipated subsequent yr.

Josso is now campaigning, as she places it, to “make victims’ journeys simpler” in the case of the French authorized system.

“At this time, it is a catastrophe. As a result of only a few victims who file complaints are in a position to have a trial, due to the shortage of proof. [There’s not] sufficient medical, psychological or authorized assist. We discover shortcomings in all places when it issues sexual violence.”

Josso has now joined forces with Gisèle Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline, to place collectively a drug-testing package that may very well be made out there in pharmacies all through France. It now has authorities backing for a trial rollout, helped by the publicity generated by the Pelicot case.

“I am optimistic. The medical world and the French individuals need disgrace to vary sides [from the victim to the accused],” says Josso, quoting the phrase made well-known by Gisèle Pelicot.

However Dr Leila Chaouachi, a chemist and skilled on the Paris Dependancy Monitoring Centre, says that the trial in Avignon is only one step in an extended wrestle to make individuals extra conscious of medication and rape.

“It must grow to be an actual main public well being concern that everybody takes significantly, and which forces the authorities to urgently handle these points to enhance look after victims.

“It is necessary for all of us to consider the problem, to think about it a well being concern, not only a justice concern. It issues all of us.”

At current the phrase “consent” isn’t included within the definition of rape in French legal guidelines, so some have argued that it must be modified to make it extra specific. However Ms Noblinski believes the main focus must be elsewhere.

“[It] must be on the police, on the investigations, on funding them correctly, not on tinkering with the legislation,” she says. “They do not have adequate assets. They’ve too many circumstances, and that is the actual concern. When you have got too many issues to deal with, it’s totally exhausting to seek out proof.”

On her every day commute to the courthouse, through the first weeks of the trial, Gisèle Pelicot walked together with her shoulders hunched and her posture defensive. She appeared flustered by the sheer stage of curiosity the case generated. By the closing arguments, nevertheless, her manner was totally completely different and she sat perfectly poised.

That has coincided with a greater change: because the trial progressed, the prosecution, these watching – and Mrs Pelicot herself – got here to know the extraordinary affect of her determination to choose not only for an open trial, however for each element to be proven in courtroom.

“She’s displaying us that… in case you’re a sufferer… do your greatest to not carry disgrace. Hold your head excessive,” says Elsa Labouret.

“As a lady, you begin by being doubted. You begin off as a liar and you need to show that it is true. I do not doubt that each girl has been by way of one thing. One thing, you understand. In that method she represents all the ladies on the earth.

“[Gisèle Pelicot] determined to make this greater than herself. To make this about the best way that we, as a society, deal with sexual violence.”

Rising from yet one more day within the courtroom, the French journalist Juliette Campion stopped to mirror on what affect the case might need. “It was troublesome to see all these movies… As a lady, it is difficult, and I really feel drained,” she says.

“However at the least we did our job, and we talked about it. It is a very small step. It will not be a giant factor. The one factor I can hope for now could be that will probably be a sport changer for some males. And a few ladies too, perhaps.”

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