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French woman Gisele Pelicot says police uncovering alleged mass rape organized by husband “saved her life”
A French woman whose husband is accused of enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged said at his trial Thursday that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes.
“The police saved my life by investigating Mister P.’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband, who is one of 51 men from all walks of life standing trial over the alleged attacks.
Pelicot had initially wished to remain anonymous but has since appeared in public and her lawyer said she’d agreed to be fully identified. She insisted that the trial take place in public so the full facts of the case could emerge.
CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP/Getty
Pelicot, now 71, had remained stoic and silent through the three first days of the high-profile case, communicating only through her lawyers. But she revealed her emotion on the stand Thursday when she recounted the moment in November 2020 when investigators first showed her the images of a decade of sexual abuse allegedly orchestrated and filmed by her husband, identified in court as Dominique P.
“My world is falling apart. For me, everything is falling apart. Everything I have built up over 50 years,” she told the court. “Inside, I’m in ruins.”
“Frankly, these are scenes of horror for me,” she said of the images as her husband listened with his head bowed.
“I’m lying motionless on the bed, being raped,” she added, calling the video “barbaric.”
“They treat me like a rag doll,” she told the panel of five judges, adding that she had only gained the courage to watch the video in May, years after she was first made aware of it.
“Don’t talk to me about sex scenes. These are rape scenes,” she said, stressing that she had never engaged in swinging or any other libertine sex.
Lawyers for some of the defendants questioned in court on Wednesday whether the couple had had a libertine relationship, or whether it was credible that Pelicot had noticed nothing for the entire decade of the alleged abuse.
The line of questioning appeared to upset the plaintiff, although she stayed put while her three children briefly left the courtroom.
“Of course she was offended,” said her lawyer, Antoine Camus. “She wanted to respond. We felt her bobbing up and down behind us, saying, ‘I want to answer. I just have to answer’ and we told her, ‘Tomorrow!'”
“I am absolutely not complicit,” she said Thursday. “I never pretended to sleep, nothing of the sort.”
A folder labelled “abuse”
Pelicot’s husband is accused of abusing her between 2011 and 2020, drugging her with sleeping pills and then recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her, lead investigator Jeremie Bosse Platiere told the court Wednesday.
Dominique Pelicot was exposed by chance after he was caught filming up women’s skirts in a local supermarket.
On Tuesday, he answered “yes” when asked if he was guilty of the accusations against him.
The 71-year-old father of three allegedly documented his actions with meticulous precision on a hard drive with a folder labelled “abuse.”
That enabled French police to track down more than 50 men suspected of raping his wife while she was drugged. A third of them were identified using facial recognition software, Bosse Platiere said.
The senior police chief for the Hautes-Alpes region said he had hand-picked investigators “who had the stomach” to face videos and images of abuse.
As part of their investigation police drew up a list of 72 individuals suspected of abusing Pelicot. The investigators counted around 200 instances of alleged rape, by her husband and more than 90 strangers they say he enlisted through an adult website.
Prosecutors say the alleged assaults took place between July 2011 and October 2020, mostly in the couple’s home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people in the southern region of Provence.
Most of the suspects face up to 20 years in prison for aggravated rape if they’re convicted.
Eighteen of the 51 accused are in custody, including Dominique Pelicot, but 32 other defendants are attending the trial as free men, having not been placed under arrest. One other suspect, who remains at large, will be tried in absentia.
The trial is expected to last four months, until late December, which Camus said would be “a totally awful ordeal” for Gisele Pelicot.
“For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes to which she was subjected for 10 years,” of which she has “no memory,” he told AFP.
Dominique Pelicot admitted to investigators that he gave his wife powerful tranquilizers, often Temesta, an anxiety-reducing drug.
The alleged abuse started when the couple was living near Paris and continued after they moved to Mazan two years later, prosecutors said.
The suspect was said to have given the men strict instructions so they would not wake her up when they abused her during the night. No aftershave or cigarette odor were allowed, and they had to warm their hands before touching her, and get undressed in the kitchen so they would not accidentally leave clothes behind in the bedroom.
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Craig Newmark, the founder of online classified-ads site Craigslist, thinks the U.S. has a cybersecurity problem.
The entrepreneur turned philanthropist has pledged to donate $100 million to help safeguard the country from potential future cyberattacks, the Wall Street Journal first reported. Newmark will allocate $50 million to protect infrastructure, like power grids, from cyberattacks, including from foreign nations. The other half of his donation will be put toward educating the general public about how to safeguard their personal information, according to the report.
Newmark, 71, retired from the company he founded in 2018.
“The country is under attack,” Newmark told the Wall Street Journal. He said that cybersecurity experts who are working to protect the country from attack “need people to champion them.”
Today, many households make use of connected appliances or smart devices that can make them vulnerable to being hacked by criminals. At the corporate level, cyberattacks have become increasingly common.
“In the current cyberwar, the fight is on our own shores, and we all need to play an active role for the protection of our country and ourselves,” Newmark writes on his website.
In June, a hacking group took down CDK Global’s software platform, crippling auto dealerships across the U.S. CDK said that hackers demanded a ransom in order to restore its systems. In February, hackers infiltrated payments manager Change Healthcare, paralyzing segments of the U.S. Health care system. They are but two examples of the tremendous repercussions a cyberattack can have on an industry.
As part of his latest commitment, Newmark, who has pledged to give away nearly all of his wealth to charity, is making donations to a project out of the University of Chicago’s public policy school that trains cybersecurity volunteers to strengthen local infrastructure. Child internet-safety group Common Sense Media, is another beneficiary, according to the WSJ report.
The large majority of the $100 million pledge has not yet been allocated, and organizations can apply for donations through Newmark’s philanthropic organization, Craig Newmark Philanthropies.
On the foundation’s website, Newmark says he likes to donate to organizations that he believes in and lets them spend the money as they see fit. “Okay, what I do is find people who are really good at their jobs, and who can tolerate my sense of humor. I provide them with resources, and then get outta their way,” he states.
In addition to cybersecurity, other causes Newmark champions include support for military families and veterans, safeguarding trustworthy journalism and pigeon rescue.
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Borrowers saddled with higher interest rates on everything from mortgages to credit cards received some welcome news on Wednesday when the Federal Reserve announced a half a percentage point cut to the federal funds rate. That brings the range down to 4.75% to 5.00%, a major reduction from the elevated position the range was frozen at for more than a year.
While it will take some time for that reduction to reverberate, it will inevitably make borrowing cheaper in the weeks and months to come. And with other cuts possible for when the Fed meets again in November and December, borrowing could become even more affordable by the end of the year.
That doesn’t mean, however, that borrowers stuck with high-interest-rate debt should wait for relief. There’s a strong argument to be made that these borrowers should take action now instead. Below, we’ll break down why.
Learn how the right debt relief service can help you here now.
Why borrowers shouldn’t wait for rate cuts to fix their debt
While waiting for rate cuts to echo throughout the economy may be tempting, particularly if you’re suffering from high-rate debt, that could be a mistake. Here’s why:
Rates may not fall dramatically
Credit card interest rates have surged in recent years, averaging over 20% right now. But those rates won’t fall as rapidly as they’ve grown. That’s because credit card rates are determined by a series of complex factors, only one of which is the federal funds rate. And even if credit card rates came down by the same half a percentage point that the federal funds rate did, that’s likely to make very little difference in what you have to pay each month, especially if you’re making minimum payments. So if you’re waiting for the Fed to help reduce what you have to pay on your credit card you could be waiting a very long time.
Start exploring your credit card debt relief options here instead.
Your debt will accrue in the interim
Even if you could rely on multiple rate cuts to come, your existing debt will continue to accrue interest and, possibly, penalties and fees if you’re already struggling to pay what you’ve borrowed. And if you can’t make adequate payments right now, it’ll become even more difficult to do so when dealing with a higher debt total (with compounded interest).
Take a multi-pronged approach
There are multiple debt relief options available right now. From debt consolidation loans to debt management programs to credit card debt forgiveness and even bankruptcy in extreme circumstances, there’s likely a path forward for you now. But that doesn’t mean that you still can’t try to position yourself to take advantage of lower rates. Since rate cuts have broad effects, you may be able to consolidate your debt with a debt consolidation loan now, for example, and then refinance it when rates drop later this year or in 2025. Just don’t sit idle, as debt, no matter the form, can quickly become debilitating if not properly addressed.
Speak with a debt relief servicer now who can help.
The bottom line
It’s never a good idea to let your debt accumulate, even if you’re confident that rate cuts on the horizon could help. Rate cuts, instead, will offer gradual relief, not the significant help you may need. Plus, your debt, fees and penalties will compound in the interim. Instead, consider taking a multi-pronged approach by researching a series of debt relief options that can help you now. And keep rate cuts in mind for the future when you may be able to capitalize by refinancing instead.