A judge in France on Thursday found the former husband of Gisèle Pelicot, who admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, guilty of aggravated rape. He was given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Over the course of the trial, Pelicot — who insisted that her full name be published and the court proceedings be made public — has been praised for her courage and become a symbol of the fight against sexual violence in France and around the world.
“I want to express my gratitude, very profound, to all the people who supported me during this difficult time. Your witness, your statements, have really moved me and they have given me the strength to come back every day for these long days of the trial,” Pelicot told journalists outside the court Thursday.
“I wanted to open the doors of this trial last September so that society could see what was happening. I’ll never regret this decision. I have confidence in our capacity, collectively, to find a better future, in which men and women alike can live harmlessly together with mutual respect,” she said.
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Roger Arata, the lead judge at the court in Avignon, southeast France, also read out the verdicts for 49 other men who were accused of raping Pelicot alongside her ex-husband, at his invitation, and one other accused of aggravated sexual assault. All the men were found guilty, but one had his conviction reduced from rape to sexual assault. They were all given sentences of between three and 15 years, and two of the sentences were suspended.
“The children are disappointed by these low sentences,” one of Pelicot’s family members, who asked not to be named, told the French news agency AFP.
Pelicot was greeted as she arrived at the court Thursday by crowds holding signs with slogans such as: “Thank you for your courage.” She and her daughters sat in the courtroom as the verdicts were read out, resting their heads against a wall, CBS News partner network BBC News reported.
The trial began on Sept. 2 and, almost every day, Pelicot came face to face with her former husband, Dominique, or one of the 50 other men charged with assaulting her. She insisted that videos submitted as evidence, made by her ex-husband and showing men assaulting her while she appeared unconscious, be shown in the court.
Dominique Pelicot was also found guilty of the attempted aggravated rape of a woman named Cillia, the wife of another man, Jean Pierre Marechal, who was one of the co-accused, as well as taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law, Celine and Aurore, BBC News reported. Sitting in court, he showed no emotion as the verdicts were read out, according to the BBC. After the verdict and sentencing, his lawyer said he would have ten days to make an appeal, which he was considering.
The assaults took place between 2011 and 2020, when Dominique Pelicot was taken into custody. Police found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse on his computer drives, which helped lead them to other suspects. Some of the men said in court that they believed the unconscious woman was okay with it, or that her husband’s permission was sufficient.
CLEMENT MAHOUDEAU/AFP/Getty
“It’s not for us to feel shame — it’s for them,” Pelicot declared during the trial, referring to the attackers. “Above all, I’m expressing my will and determination to change this society.”
Pelicot continued attending the hearings throughout the trial, in part, because she “felt she was somehow representing the victims of these kinds of abuses,” her lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said ahead of the verdicts being delivered on Thursday. “There are very many victims that are going to trial, facing their aggressors without having anyone outside, lining up for them, offering flowers. So she felt that she needed to continue to keep focus, because she didn’t elect to, but she felt that she was somehow representing the victims, and she felt responsible for that.”
Controversial French laws
Pelicot’s case triggered protests across France, and there was hope among some demonstrators that the case could lead to changes in controversial French laws governing sexual consent.
France introduced a legal age of sexual consent in 2021 after a public outcry over the rape of an 11-year-old schoolgirl by a man who was initially convicted on a lesser charge. Since then, sex with anyone under the age of 15 has been viewed as non-consensual, but French law does not refer to consent in cases involving older victims.
Under French law, rape is defined as penetration or oral sex using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise,” without taking consent into account, according to the Reuters news agency. Prosecutors must, therefore, prove an intention to rape if they are to be successful in court, legal experts told Reuters.
Just 14% of rape accusations in France lead to formal investigations, according to a study by the Institute of Public Policies.
“Why don’t we manage to obtain convictions? The first reason is the law,” French legal expert Catherine Le Magueresse told Reuters. “The law is written in such a way that victims must comply with the stereotype of a ‘good victim’ and a ‘true rape’: an unknown attacker, use of violence, and the victim’s resistance. But it is only true for a minority of rapes.”
“I’m trying to understand”
Speaking in court during the trial, Pelicot, who is 72, talked about how she had thought she was in a loving marriage with her husband and would never have guessed what was happening.
“We would have a glass of white wine together. I never found anything strange about my potatoes,” Pelicot told the court. “We finished eating. Often when it’s a football match on TV, I’d let him watch it alone. He brought my ice cream to my bed, where I was. My favorite flavor – raspberry – and I thought: ‘How lucky I am. He’s a love.'”
She said she didn’t have any sensation of being drugged.
“I never felt my heart flutter. I didn’t feel anything. I must have gone under very quickly. I would wake up with my pajamas on,” Pelicot told the court, adding that she would sometimes wake up “more tired than usual, but I walk a lot and thought it was that
“I’m trying to understand,” she said, “how this husband, who was the perfect man, could have got to this.”
“Nothing will give her back the 15 years that she has lost, the 10 years that she was living without knowing what was happening to her,” Pelicot’s attorney, Stéphane Babonneau, said ahead of the verdicts on Thursday. “All she can expect now is for justice to be served, and then, well, who could find comfort in someone going to prison for 10, 15 years, seeing another family destroyed. No one – and, in fact – definitely not her.”
Frank Andrews
contributed to this report.