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Gisele Pelicot explains why she wanted her husband’s mass rape trial in France held in full public view
Gisele Pelicot, the woman at the center of the mass-rape trial that’s shocked her own country of France and the world, told her husband in court on Wednesday that she still “did not understand why” he had drugged and raped her for nearly a decade, along with dozens of other men he invited into their home.
“My life has crumbled to nothing,” she told the court in Avignon as her husband Dominique hung his head. “I always tried to lift you up. You reached the lowest depths of the human soul — but unfortunately, it was you who made that choice.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to rebuild myself, get over all this,” she said Wednesday. “At almost 72 years old, I don’t know if I have enough life to get back on my feet.”
CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty
Dominique Pelicot has admitted to drugging his wife regularly between 2011 and 2020 so that he and dozens of other men could rape her.
The youngest of the other 49 defendants, Joan K., who was 22 at the time, was absent for the birth of his daughter when one of his alleged assaults was said to have taken place, the French news agency AFP cited prosecutors as saying during the trial.
“It’s not for us to feel shame”
Gisele Pelicot has been revered in France and around the world for insisting the trial be held open to the public – which is not, by default, how sexual assault cases are handled in France.
She said in court Wednesday, according to French newspaper Le Monde, that she wanted the proceedings to be public in the hope that “all women who are victims of rape can say to themselves: ‘Madame Pelicot did it, so we can do it.”‘
“I don’t want them to feel ashamed anymore. It’s not for us to feel shame — it’s for them [sexual attackers],” she said. “Above all, I’m expressing my will and determination to change this society.”
She went into harrowing detail about how her husband had slipped drugs into her food.
ZZIIGG/REUTERS
“We would have a glass of white wine together. I never found anything strange about my potatoes,” she told the court while reportedly refusing to look at Dominique. “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.'”
“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,” she said, 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.”
“No possible defense”
The trial, which is due to continue until Dec. 20, has triggered protests across France. On Saturday, protesters gathered outside dozens of courts to denounce “rape culture” in France.
There’s hope among some demonstrators that the Pelicot case could lead to changes in controversial French laws governing sexual consent.
Until another high-profile rape trial in 1980 triggered a change, the crime of rape in France had been narrowly defined by a Napoleon-era law as “illicit coitus with a woman who is known not to consent,” according to France’s national radio broadcaster RFI.
Only in 2021 did France introduce a legal age of sexual consent — and only after a public outcry over the rape of an 11-year-old schoolgirl by a man who was initially convicted only on the lesser charge of sexual assault.
An adult having sex with anyone under the age of 15 has been viewed as non-consensual since that law was changed. Unlike many European countries, however, French law still does not refer to consent in cases involving older victims.
French law defines rape as penetration or oral sex using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise,” according to the Reuters news agency, but does not take consent into account. Prosecutors must, therefore, prove an intention to rape, legal experts told Reuters.
According to a study by the Institute of Public Policies, just 14% of rape accusations in France lead to formal investigations.
“Why don’t we manage to obtain convictions? The first reason is the law,” 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.”
Lawyers for some of Dominique Pelicot’s 49 alleged accomplices — most of whom have denied the rape charges — have said they thought his wife was asleep, taking part in a fetish act, or that Dominique’s consent was sufficient.
Gisele Pelicot’s testimony on Wednesday was the second time she had addressed the court. She told the chamber in September that she felt “humiliated” by the defendants’ lawyers.
“I’ve been called an alcoholic. I’m said to be Mr Pelicot’s accomplice,” she said, shouting: “Rape is rape!”
Gisele Pelicot was greeted upon her arrival to the court on Wednesday by a crowd offering applause and support, as she has been most days during the trial.
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Four space station fliers undock and head for Friday splashdown to wrap up extended mission
Wrapping up an extended 235-day mission, three NASA astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut strapped into their SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule and undocked from the International Space Station on Wednesday, targeting a pre-dawn Friday splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
With Crew 8 “Endeavour” commander Matthew Dominick and co-pilot Michael Barrett monitoring cockpit displays, flanked on the right by cosmonaut Alexander Grebenkin and on the left by NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps, the Crew Dragon undocked from the lab’s Harmony module at 5:05 p.m. EDT and slowly backed away.
NASA TV
“Endeavour, departing,” called space station commander Sunita Williams, ringing the ship’s bell following naval tradition. “Fair winds and following seas.”
Left behind aboard the station were Crew 9 commander Nick Hague and his crewmates, cosmonaut Alexander Gorbunov and Boeing Starliner astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Williams, along with Soyuz cosmonauts Aleksey Ovchinin, Ivan Vagner and NASA crewmate Donald Pettit.
If all goes well, the Crew 8 Dragon will splash down in the Gulf of Mexico at 3:29 a.m. Friday to close out a nearly eight-month-long mission spanning 3,776 orbits and 100 million miles since launch from the Kennedy Space Center on March 3.
NASA
The crew originally expected to return to Earth in September, but the flight slipped into early October in the wake of a decision to delay the Crew 9 launch from late August to late September to provide an eventual ride home for Wilmore and Williams.
The Starliner returned to Earth Sept. 7 without its crew on board because of safety concerns. The Crew 9 Dragon then was launched Sept. 28 with just two passengers, Hague and Gorbunov. That freed up two seats for Starliner commander Wilmore and co-pilot Williams, who will return to Earth next February with Hague and Gorbunov.
Sorting all that out pushed the Crew 8 departure into October. Dominick and company then were repeatedly held up by high winds and rough seas, much of it hurricane related, at splashdown sites in the Gulf of Mexico and along Florida’s east coast.
But forecasters expected favorable conditions Friday, and the Crew 8 fliers were finally cleared to proceed with undocking.
In the final stretch before the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris embarked on a three-state tour across battleground states to court swing voters — with a particular focus on those who backed former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year.
Harris’ pitch was remarkably similar to the foreign policy warning about Trump that Haley delivered when she was a presidential candidate.
“If Donald Trump were president, Vladimir Putin will be sitting in Kyiv — and understand what that would mean for America and our standing around the world,” Harris told Oakland County voters in Michigan on Monday. Claiming Trump would surrender Ukraine to Russia, Harris added, “that is signaling to the President of Russia he can get away with what he has done. Look at the map. Poland would be next.”
As a candidate in Michigan earlier this year, Haley warned of the potential consequences of Trump’s failure to treat Putin as a threat.
“Once they take Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next,” Haley said. “Those are NATO countries that immediately put America at war.”
Both Harris and Haley also stressed the need to support American allies, denouncing Trump and Republicans’ views on an isolationism they say would move the U.S. closer to war.
“Isolationism, which is exactly what Donald Trump is pushing to pull out of NATO and abandon our friends,” Harris said Monday. “Isolationism is not insulation. It is not insulation. It will not insulate us from harm in terms of our national security.”
Haley criticized Trump in similar terms. “Look at the situation that the Republican Party is putting us in and that Donald Trump is encouraging — it’s this isolationist approach,” Haley told Michigan voters earlier this year. “America can never be so arrogant to think we don’t need friends.”
On Monday, Harris characterized Trump’s relationships with dictators as a threat to democracy, a point Haley also made on the campaign trail.
Trump, Harris said, “is so clearly able to be manipulated by favor and flattery including from dictators and autocrats around the world, and America knows that that is not how we stand.”
The former U.N. ambassador in January said of Trump, “You don’t befriend dictators and thugs who want to kill us.” She added, “When I was in the administration with him at the U.N., I literally had to sit him down and tell him to stop this bromance that he had with Putin.”
Harris and Haley may stand on opposite ends of the political spectrum, but Harris is tapping into their common views on foreign policy and America’s role in the world to help persuade undecided moderate Republican and independent voters in suburban areas.
In the counties where Harris campaigned on Monday across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Haley earned tens of thousands of votes during the Republican primaries — even after she dropped out of the presidential race. A senior Harris campaign official said the campaign believes this is an indication of suburban voters’ discontent with Trump. The vice president has been relying on Republicans to help make her appeal to these voters, including former Rep. Liz Cheney, an outspoken critic of Trump who has endorsed Harris and campaigned with her this week. Harris also hit the trail with other Republicans and former Trump aides earlier this month.
In 2020, Joe Biden won Michigan by less than 155,000 votes. In her race against Trump during the primaries, Haley won nearly 55,000 votes in Oakland County, Michigan.
Haley dropped out of the presidential race before the Pennsylvania and Wisconsin primaries, but nonetheless, in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Haley received 9,000 votes, about 24% of the GOP primary votes in the county. President Biden’s margin in Pennsylvania was just 80,000 votes in 2020, and it was even smaller in Wisconsin — a mere 20,000 votes. Haley received 9,000 votes in Waukesha County, Wisconsin.
While Harris tries to woo former Haley supporters, Haley herself is ready to campaign for Trump, despite her warnings about him months ago.
According to a source familiar with the planning, Haley’s team has given the Trump campaign availability dates for a potential joint campaign event, and the two teams are working to schedule an appearance before Election Day.
Last month, Haley told CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” she was happy to be helpful to the campaign if needed.
“To me, the stark contrast between a Trump and Harris administration are what led me to say, yes, I need to, you know, I’m going to be voting with Trump, and I’m going to speak at the convention,” she said. “Do I agree with his style? Do I agree with his approach? Do I agree with his communications? No. When I look at the policies and how they affect my family and how I think they’re going to affect the country, that’s where I go back and I look at the differences.”
In an interview with “Fox and Friends” last week, Trump said “I’ll do what I have to do” when asked if he’d be requesting Haley’s help, but he reiterated that he “beat her badly.”
