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00:00French court is now deliberating and is set to hand down a verdict in a mass
00:04rape trial this week that sent shockwaves throughout the country and the world.
00:09The main defendant, Dominique Pellicou, has admitted to drugging his then-wife Giselle
00:14for almost a decade so that he and strangers he recruited online could rape her.
00:19The trial has made Giselle Pellicou into a feminist icon after she waived her right to
00:23anonymity and demanded that shame change sides.
00:27To talk more about this we're joined by Andrea Gurev-Vintilla, Associate Professor of Psychology
00:34at Paris Notaire University. Thank you very much for speaking to us on France 24.
00:39Thank you very much.
00:40I wanted to start by asking you the fact that prosecutors have said that there will be a
00:44before and an after for this trial but it will also just represent a small brick in
00:49rebuilding society's attitude towards rape. So what weight then does this case have in
00:55France and what concrete changes do you think will come from it?
00:59Thank you for this excellent question. The research in social psychology would highlight
01:04the Mazin case as a critical case to highlight the issues of coercive control and sexual violence
01:12in France and I would like to highlight several key facts that the fact that the incident that
01:19led to the arrest took place like in most domestic cases that we had to research either
01:25for my book or through research with Women for Women France. This case that the incident
01:31that led to the arrest took place in the context of other abusive behaviors and in fact Caroline
01:40Giselle Pellicou's daughter highlighted in her book that not just her father raped her mother
01:47and probably herself but he also coerced her into forced debt and took astronomical
01:54created astronomical debts in the name of his wife. In addition to this when Caroline Darion,
02:00the daughter of the couple and her brothers tried to take their mother to the neurologist
02:07Dominique Pellicou also misled them and told them that in fact the symptoms that they had observed
02:15her loss of memory due to the drugs that she had been given to be raped actually he told them that
02:24this loss of memory is a result of her stress and insomnia therefore attacking her human rights to
02:30health. What I'm underlying here is the fact that the incident that led to the arrest and in the end
02:37to the Mazin case took place in this context of course of control by Dominique Pellicou on the
02:44whole family in fact Giselle Pellicou of course but also her children. And you've said that this
02:50you hope that this trial can strengthen the legal recognition of coercive control but what exactly
02:56does that look like I mean is it it's always financial or are there other elements to this?
03:04Coercive control is a malevolent course of behavior which a perpetrator deploys against
03:11his target in principle mainly an adult target but can also of course by refraction touch the
03:19children concern the children. In this case in the Mazin case we're seeing as I mentioned
03:25economic violence, financial abuse, rape as routine, rape in fact through proxies through allies
03:35of the main perpetrator. So coercive control is an attack on women's resources and human rights
03:44and this is how we would like it to be legally criminalized in France because it is also a
03:51predictor of as we see in the Mazin case of much bigger crimes such as marital rape
03:58and even femicide or child homicide in the context of coercive control.
04:05And I'm just going to jump in there sorry this this case has also put a spotlight on chemical
04:09submission as it's known in France or drug facilitated rape. Do we know how common this
04:14practice is either here in France or elsewhere? In fact here too we are facing a stereotype that
04:21is largely shared. We think that chemical submission often occurs in public places such as
04:32clubs and so on but research mainly run by one of France's MPs herself a victim of
04:41chemical submission tells us that the main place where women are drugged is the house which is
04:48convergent with international research about violence against women mainly being perpetrated
04:54in the home. Being domestic violence is the most frequent form of violence against women and
05:00chemical submission of course is a personalized tactic of coercive control and we see it also
05:07occurring most often in within the homes. But I would also like to to draw attention to the case
05:14of Caroline Darion who is the daughter of Giselle Pellicot because she has been left a little bit
05:19out of this trial when she's a full victim as a child of the of Giselle. Not just a victim of
05:30indirect victim because her mother is a victim but she probably she thinks she has been raped
05:35herself she was she spent three days in the hospital when she found out that police showed
05:40her a picture of herself asleep in bed wearing someone else's underwear. So I'm drawing attention
05:50to the case of Caroline because this is a critical example of how far reaching the course the
05:58consequences of coercive control are on the family at large and not just on one victim.
06:05Indeed and just to finish up we're running out of time but I wanted to say that we've often been
06:10reporting about how much attention this trial has garnered all across the world particularly
06:14among women. Some have even traveled from abroad to go to Avignon to see parts of these proceedings.
06:19How can we explain this? Is it a reflection of how many women have been affected by sexual violence?
06:27Research, international research in fact shows that
06:31one in three women at least have been victims of sexual violence across the world.
06:36It is interesting that this international attention was being drawn to France because of the Mazan case.
06:42Of course the problem is larger and we do think that the Mazan case in France and hopefully abroad
06:47can raise awareness about coercive control in the family and push for significant legal and
06:54societal changes in France and beyond. All right thank you very much Andreeva Gurev-Vintila.
07:01Thank you very much for your analysis on France 24.

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