If 2024 “belonged” to any one person, it was Gisèle Pelicot. The image of the 72-year-old grandmother sitting straight-backed in a French courtroom as her 50 rapists were convicted today is as indelible as the facts of the Avignon trial are inexplicable. A husband who, for 10 years, sedated and raped his wife at their Provençal home, then drove her to medical specialists for pelvic pain and memory loss. Forty-nine men who, under the cover of darkness, joined him in assaulting her—men identified as nurses and prison guards, firefighters and truck drivers, all living within a 31-mile radius of each other, ranging in age from 27 to 72. (“Monsieur-Tout-le-Monde”, as the French press dubbed them.) And then, making the prosecution’s case both airtight and uniquely horrifying, thousands upon thousands of images and videos of said rapes, neatly organised and catalogued in a hard-drive file titled simply “abuse”—a pixelated who’s who of the predatory perpetrators.
“It’s time that the macho, patriarchal society that trivialises rape changes,” Gisèle told the court during her final statement this week. “It’s time we changed the way we look at rape.” Her stark refusal to be either shamed or ashamed throughout her 15-week trial has done more, I think, to accomplish that change than even she realises. It’s Gisèle who chose, despite the concern of those around her, to have a public trial; Gisèle, too, who actively pushed to have the images and videos of her assaults shown in court. Journalists present have described them as excruciating to look at; I cannot fathom the strength it must have taken for her to endure rewatching them.
But she did endure it. And, in some ways—and some ways only—her decision to persist was vindicated. Today, bent double and weeping, her husband, Dominique, “the monster of Avignon”, received the maximum sentence of 20 years in jail for rape. Gisèle leaned her head against the wall of the courthouse as Judge Roger Arata meted out the punishment for her husband of five decades. And then, one by one, each and every one of her other 49 rapists was found guilty of aggravated rape and/or sexual assault. Outside the courtroom, an assembled crowd held a banner aloft that read: la honte change de camp. The shame changes sides.
And yet: nearly all of Gisèle’s rapists, with the exception of her husband, received shorter sentences than prosecutors had asked for. Six of them will walk free from court today, having either served the duration of their sentence already or received a suspension. The longest sentence bar Dominique’s was 15 years, for Romain Vandevelde, a man who raped Gisèle six times and declined to use a condom despite knowing he was HIV positive. Jean-Pierre Marechal—the only defendant who did not assault Gisèle but rather used Dominique’s methods to rape his own wife—received 12 years. Sometimes, Dominique would join him. Sitting in court, hearing the terms read out, Caroline Darian, Gisèle’s daughter, whispered the words: “This isn’t possible.”
“This isn’t possible.” A phrase that neatly encapsulates the horrors of the Avignon case as a whole. “The justice system has not done its job,” Anne-Cécile Mailfert, chair of Fondation des Femmes, insisted, calling the sentences a “disgrace”. In fact, it’s failed in more ways than one, I would argue. Because regardless of the groundswell of support for Gisèle outside the walls of Avignon Courthouse, inside its chambers, she was subjected to the same lines of problematic questioning as countless rape victims before her. Recall, if you will, the defence’s selection of 27 photos—taken from the more than 20,000 files recovered on Dominique’s laptop—in which Gisèle appeared to be conscious and/or using a sex toy. “These photos are very explicit,” one lawyer casually pronounced. “Not all women would accept this type of photo, even with a loving husband.” Do you not, another asked afterwards, “have a secret inclination for exhibitionism?”
Of course interrogations must be conducted in a rape trial. Of course the allegations must be analysed from every angle, as when any crime is alleged. But I often think about a piece that Suzie Miller wrote for Vogue just before her play, Prima Facie, debuted in the West End with Jodie Comer as its lead. A former criminal defence lawyer, she had left the profession, she explained, because “there are some areas of the law that are so gendered and skewed towards the male experience that it is impossible for me to buy into the legal immunity of ‘cab rank rule’, ie take what you are offered case-wise and work with that… Generations of men—usually white, middle-class, heteronormative men with conservative leanings—have shaped our legal system, and not always in the best interests of women. Don’t forget that marital rape only became illegal in the UK in 1991.” Standard procedure, when it comes to cross-examinations in rape cases, is still “to undermine the complainant’s entire sense of what happened to them using whatever means possible”.
Gisèle managed to hold her own under the defence’s questioning. “If a man came to have intercourse with me, he still should have asked for my consent,” she shot back when it was implied the aforementioned images might be construed as an invitation to have sex with her comatose body—a 21st-century twist on the same logic used to shame perhaps France’s second most notorious rape victim, 14th-century noblewoman Marguerite de Carrouges. It’s farcical how little attitudes have changed in the 638 intervening years between their two ordeals.
In fact, one of the more unexpectedly moving—and unexpectedly poignant—moments in the Avignon trial came on Monday, when the accused were asked whether they had anything they would like to say before the verdicts were read. Most abstained. 15, however, chose to apologise to Gisèle. “I regret it and I ask her forgiveness,” the aforementioned Vandevelde said. “It is indeed your body that I subjected to this rape,” another perpetrator named Cedric Grassot admitted. And then a man named Jérôme Vilela spoke. He would accept, he said, whatever sentence was handed down to him rather than appealing. Why? Because he couldn’t bring himself to make Gisèle “endure” another trial. Now, what does that tell you?
This story was originally published on British Vogue.
