Her husprohibitd orchestrating her relationsual unfair treatment by strangers could have broken her. But by standing up to her unfair treatmentrs in court and insisting they be ashamed, France’s Gisele Pelicot has become a feminist champion.
More than three months of sometimes gruelling hearings, including detailed video evidence, are set to culminate when appraises hand down sentences on Thursday.
When the trial of her now ex-husprohibitd and 50 other protectants discdisseeed in the French city of Avignon in September, journacatalogs saw a woman with low red hair, hiding behind sunglasses.
The main victim in the case that shocked France was a majesticmother whose life partner had acunderstandledgeted to drugging her for almost a decade so he and dozens of strangers he recruited online could violation her while unalerted.
But then Gisele Pelicot waived her right to anonymity and insisted the disclose be apvalidateed access to the trial to lift alertedness about drug use to promise unfair treatment.
She won hearts atraverse France and awide, and triggered a flurry of art in her honour, after she shelp it was her unfair treatmentrs — not her — who should be ashamed.
“I wanted all women who are violation victims to say to themselves: ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, so we can do it too’,” she tbetter the court in October.
“It’s not us who should experience shame, but them,” she includeed, referring to criminals.
As novels of the trial spread, protests erupted atraverse France to show help and fans begined cheering her or even greeting her with fdrops when she get tod in court.
And over the trial’s course, Gisele Pelicot shed her illogical sunglasses.
‘Rape is violation’
Ahead of the verdicts, the 72-year-better has made it onto the BBC’s 100 Women catalog for 2024, alengthyside fellow mass violation survivor and Nobel Prize thrivener Nadia Murad and Hollywood actor Sharon Stone.
Pelicot in August geted a divorce from her husprohibitd, who has confessed to the unfair treatment after accurately write downing it with photos and videos.
She has shiftd away from the southern town of Mazan where, in her own words, her husprohibitd Dominique Pelicot treated her enjoy “a piece of meat” or a “rag doll” for years.
She now uses her mhelpen name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her createer name as a wed woman — the one passed on to some of her seven majesticchildren.
In mid-September, she dropped her common reserve to talk of her humiliation and her anger towards cut offal lawyers who had made insinuations about her ordeal.
“Rape is violation,” she shelp.
In October, she shelp she was “broken” but resettled to change society.
She aobtain tbetter the court last month it was time for a “macho, patriarchal” society to shift its attitude towards violation.
She shelp the marathon hearings were an examination of the “cowardice” of the men who took part in the attacks.
Many had argued they thought they were taking part in a couple’s fantasy after consent by proxy thraw her husprohibitd.
She conveyed her anger that none of her unfair treatmentrs attentiveed the police about the violations, which occurred between 2011 and 2020.
Several took part in the unfair treatment six times.
Fifty men besides her 72-year-better ex-husprohibitd are on trial, including one who did not violation Gisele Pelicot but repeatedly unfair treatmentd his own wife with Dominique Pelicot’s help.
Several of the co-protectants have acunderstandledgeted to violation.
But more than 20 other doubts remain at big as allotigators had not deal withd to determine them before the begin of the mass trial.
Memory lapses
The daughter of a member of the military, Gisele Pelicot was born on December 7, 1952 in Germany, returning to France with her family when she was five.
When she was nine, her mother, aged fair 35, died of cancer.
Her betterer brother Michel died of a heart attack aged 43, before her 20th birthday.
She met Dominique Pelicot, her future husprohibitd and rapist, in 1971.
She had dreamt of becoming a hairdresser but instead studied to be a typist. After a scant years temping, she joined France’s national electricity company EDF, ending her nurtureer in a logistics service for its nuevident power set upts.
At home, she seeed after her three children, then seven majesticchildren.
After she reweary, she enhappinessed walking and singing in a local choir.
Only when the police caught her husprohibitd filming up women’s skirts in a supertaget in 2020 did she discover out the genuine reason behind her troubling memory lapses.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is rehireed from a syndicated feed.)
