The French man who has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily-sedated wife asked forgiveness from his family on Monday and hailed the courage of his now ex-spouse during his trial. FRANCE 24's Jean-Emile Jammine speaks to Sarah McGrath, CEO of Women for Women France. She says that Gisele Pelicot is the 'perfect victim, with the perfect evidence'; despite that, defense lawyers tried to chip away at her credibility 'going almost as far as accusing her of lying'.
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00:00This is Apropos, and in this edition, our focus turns to the trial of Dominique Pellicot,
00:08the Frenchman who has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape his heavily drugged
00:13wife Giselle over a period of 10 years.
00:17With the trial wrapping up in Avignon, the 72-year-old accused took to the stand and
00:23addressed the court for the last time on Monday, asking for forgiveness from his family.
00:28Judges on the case have now begun deliberations, with the verdicts set to be handed down on
00:32Thursday.
00:33Many here are waiting to see how those sentences compare to the average terms for rape, which
00:38is 13 years in France.
00:40Solange Mougent has more on how, for many, this trial has marked a turning point in France.
00:48It is a trial that is significant because of both its scope and horror.
00:52Fifty-one accused, nearly a decade of drug-facilitated sexual assault.
00:57These mass rapes orchestrated by the victim, Giselle Pellicot's then-husband.
01:02But it is also a trial that is significant because it touches on the tragically commonplace.
01:07It speaks to the experiences and fears of so many women and men.
01:11It begs the world to question society's view and treatment of rape.
01:16For the thousands who have protested against sexual violence since the trial began, and
01:20for the women and men who have come out daily to support Giselle Pellicot, this must be
01:24a turning point.
01:26Madame Pellicot is truly admirable.
01:28She's an example for all the women who want to lodge a complaint but haven't.
01:32There will indeed be a before and an after Madame Pellicot.
01:39This is the history of women.
01:41It's a condensed concentration of all the pain, the unspoken words and the injustice.
01:48This woman, she's opened the floodgates of something.
01:52At last, at long last, we're being heard.
01:57And at last, no one can say that's not true.
02:02When Giselle Pellicot's trial began in Avignon in September, she explained her decision to
02:08hold an open trial as a means for the shame associated with rape to switch sides.
02:14That message and her courage has struck a chord in France and worldwide.
02:18In his final testimony, her now ex-husband, who pleaded guilty, also saluted her courage.
02:24The five judges in the case will now have to decide whether he'll receive the maximum
02:27sentence of 20 years.
02:29For the 50 other accused, they will also have to weigh the defence's arguments.
02:34Some of the accused claim that they were manipulated by Dominique Pellicot.
02:39Others denied that their filmed acts were rape.
02:42Her lawyers say they should have understood, what has become a rallying cry among many
02:46women, that rape is rape.
02:50We can now welcome to the conversation Sarah McGrath, the CEO of Women for Women France.
02:56It's a multilingual online resource centre for all victims of domestic abuse in France
03:01and the professionals who support them.
03:02Thanks so much for joining us here, Sarah.
03:05Every time that you hear a comment, a new comment from this trial, which has really
03:10captured the world at large.
03:12Today, we're hearing from Dominique Pellicot himself.
03:17What are your emotions?
03:19My emotions are always with Giselle Pellicot, always.
03:23You know, one thing that we're overlooked in the coverage of this case is actually how
03:26badly she's going.
03:29It's being subjected to rape or any type of sexual violence for any woman is absolutely
03:34heartbreaking, but she's expressed how difficult this has been.
03:38This is all orchestrated by a man that she loved and that she trusted in her home where
03:43she was supposed to be safe.
03:45She was gaslighted into thinking there was a problem with her health for so many years.
03:50Her husband accompanied her to doctor's appointments and said, oh, it's anxiety, it's stress.
03:56That's why she's forgetting things all along.
03:59She was being drugged against her will.
04:01So my emotion is always with Giselle and we are so grateful that she's been so incredibly
04:05brave to make this case public, which she didn't have to do.
04:08We must remind ourselves of that.
04:10I want to speak about the importance of making that public.
04:13What do you think it has given French women and society at large?
04:17Well, I think what it's done is it's put a spotlight on what victims go through in the
04:23court case, but just a little bit, because we must not forget that Giselle Pellicot,
04:28she is in a way the perfect victim and with the perfect evidence.
04:33She's got so much video footage of the crimes that have been, the alleged crimes that have
04:39been perpetrated against her.
04:41But still she had defense lawyers saying, oh, but didn't you know about it?
04:46Didn't you?
04:47And really kind of attacking her credibility, going almost as far to accuse her of lying.
04:53And so it has shown a spotlight that even for Giselle Pellicot, being that perfect victim
04:58with all of that evidence, she's still going to be accused of lying.
05:02Now, the majority of women don't have hours and the majority of victims don't have hours
05:06of footage.
05:07They have mostly their words, some physical evidence, and they go through so much in court.
05:13The majority of rape victims in France don't trust the French justice system.
05:18They don't even report it.
05:19We've only got 10 percent of rape victims reporting abuse in France because there is
05:23no confidence in the French justice system to protect them with only one to four percent
05:28of convictions.
05:29I'm with them.
05:30I agree with them that the French justice is letting down victims in this country.
05:35And that brings in your organization, Women for Women France.
05:38If you can just describe to our viewers what your organization does and then if you can
05:44also add on to that how this trial has maybe impacted your work specifically.
05:49So one thing that what we focus on is we focus on supporting foreign born women who are living
05:53in France and who are confronted with abuse because there's obviously very specific challenges
05:57there from language barrier through to the fact that abusers will often use their residency
06:02status to control them.
06:04And I must also call out that under French law currently there is no protections against
06:10that kind of abuse.
06:11So we have a lot of foreign born women living in France right now tonight who are under
06:16complete control of their French partner who are being threatened with if you don't do
06:22this or if you do do this I'm going to leave you and you're going to lose the right to
06:26residency and to live here and they can't even take that to the police or to the justice
06:30system because there's no law saying that that's illegal.
06:33So that's what we specialize in.
06:36The way that it's changed things for us to be completely transparent look victim services
06:42our services are going to remain the same but I think our advocacy is going to be focused
06:46on calling in men.
06:48We really need men to step up and to drive change in this area.
06:54It's not women we're not out here committing crimes we're not out here raping people we're
06:58not abusing women it's men who are doing it.
07:01And so even men who think that they are you know one of the good guys and they haven't
07:05ever touched a woman they're not at our protests they're not at our they're not they're never
07:09at our protests they're not at our events they haven't made it their issue.
07:14And so we're going to be really calling on men to please join us and to please make this
07:19your responsibility because it is you.
07:22It is all men who need to step up and drive change.
07:25Yes I was at the trial in Avignon and even myself seeing the queues of people lining
07:30up to this public trial.
07:32It was quite something for me to see that there were hardly any men still involved.
07:38How can we capture the attention of men on such an important issue.
07:43I don't know what it's going to take.
07:44I feel like men are so scared and and they're wrong to be scared.
07:49I have a statistic here that I think most men need to know.
07:53They are two hundred and thirty percent more likely to be raped by another man than to
07:59be falsely accused of rape.
08:02So just two hundred and thirty.
08:04Can you say that again.
08:05Yes.
08:06Exactly.
08:07Because this is something very important to hear.
08:10So all men are two hundred and thirty percent more likely to be raped by another man than
08:17to be falsely accused of rape.
08:20So if men could please understand that that's fact based that's research based there's been
08:24a big investigation that came up with that number.
08:27So I think let's drop the defensiveness and let's make this our issue.
08:32Even if you don't care about violence against women maybe care about violence against yourself.
08:36So I don't know what else we can do to get men involved.
08:42It's quite a sobering thought.
08:43I really just hope that this kind of case can open eyes in just in terms of information
08:52because one of the things that was brought up when we heard from Giselle Pellicourt when
08:57she took the stand for the second time was from her lawyer was the fact that the shed
09:03light on the fact that these are not men involved which are lurking in the shadows.
09:09These are very much men in day to day life who live amongst us and were very much part
09:17of the accused as being reportedly involved in her mass rape.
09:22How do you respond to that?
09:24Well this is this is exactly it.
09:27The profile of a perpetrator of these heinous crimes they only have one thing in common.
09:33The one thing in common is that it's a man.
09:35It's any man from all backgrounds from all levels of education from all cultures.
09:41That's a really important thing to note as well.
09:43Women for Women France has research that isn't more prevalent in one culture more than another.
09:49So we really do need to say look the perpetrators are men we love them and we know they could
09:56be men that we've known our whole lives and have never we could never imagine capable
10:00of doing these things.
10:01We need to change the culture into one that believes women when they speak up.
10:06We know statistically that false reports are so low that we've got such a big scientific
10:12body of knowledge on this now it's between one to four percent of false reports of gender
10:17based violence.
10:19We need to be believing women we need to be supporting women when they come forward and
10:23I don't know how but we need to find a way that there's space for men to actually assume
10:28what they've done and apologize for what they've done because all men accused of rape
10:34all rapists say no it wasn't me.
10:37Like we saw in this case I think it was something like in the Mazan case it was 32 out of 51
10:42of the accused have said that it was not rape that they would like to be acquitted.
10:47And you're not buying any of those testimonies which say that they were coerced into this
10:51they didn't know what they were doing.
10:54None of these hold water for you.
10:56If a woman is unconscious she cannot give her consent.
11:00It's that simple.
11:01A very very firm point to be made there.
11:06What are you hoping for the verdict on Thursday?
11:08I hope that Giselle Pellicot gets the result that she wants.
11:14That's the most important person in all of this story and that of her children we often
11:17think of children as indirect victims that's not the case they are direct victims so we
11:22hope that and then we hope that Giselle gets to she's talked about getting a psychological
11:28support we hope that she gets all the support that she can because this has been absolutely
11:32horrendous.
11:33We can see that.
11:34And not just for her for her family of course.
11:37Can this finally change the laws in France at all?
11:40There seems to be a huge resistance to changing laws in France.
11:44We have got terrible laws in France for a country that prides itself of being a country
11:48of law.
11:49We don't even have specific domestic laws we have generalist laws that we then are used
11:53to apply to prosecute complex domestic abuse cases.
11:57So we do need a huge reform in not only the laws but also the justice system more widely.
12:04We need training for judges we need unconscious bias training for judges because there's a
12:08lot of a lot of prejudice within our justice system against victims.
12:12So there needs to be serious profound reform not small band-aid solutions and announcements
12:18that we've been seeing for the past eight years and longer.
12:21Thank you so much for all your insights of course Sarah McGrath the CEO of Women for
12:26Women of France talking there about the Giselle Pellicot mass rape trial in Avignon and that's
12:32where we end this version.