'Gisele Pelicot has put the spotlight on what rape victims go through in a trial'

Guardian Nigeria

Transcript

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.

00:28Sentences 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.

00:57And these 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.

02:04When 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.

02:51We 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, today we're hearing from Dominique Pellicot himself.

03:17What are your emotions?

03:19My emotions are always with Gisele Pellicot, always.

03:23One thing that we're overlooked in the coverage of this case is actually how badly 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.

03:58All along she was being drugged against her will.

04:01So my emotion is always with Gisele 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.

04:13How 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 Gisele Pellicot, she

04:29is in a way the perfect victim and with the perfect evidence.

04:34She'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 defence 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 Gisele 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.

05:31I agree with them that the French justice is letting down victims in this country.

05:35And that brings in your organisation, Women for Women France.

05:38If you can just describe to our viewers what your organisation 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, so what we focus on is we focus on supporting foreign born women

05:53who are living in France and who are confronted with abuse because there's obviously very

05:56specific challenges there from language barrier through to the fact that abusers will often

06:02use their residency status 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

06:22do this or if you do do this, I'm going to leave you and you're going to lose the right

06:26to residency and to live here.

06:27And they can't even take that to the police or to the justice system because there's no

06:30law saying that that's illegal.

06:33So that's what we specialise 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,

06:58we're not 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 never at our protests, they're not

07:10at 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, it 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, it was quite something for me to see that there were hardly any men

07:36still 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 they're wrong to be scared.

07:49I have a statistic here that I think most men need to know.

07:53They are 230% more likely to be raped by another man than to be falsely accused of rape.

08:02So just 230...

08:03Can you say that again?

08:05Yes.

08:06Exactly.

08:07Because this is something very important to hear.

08:10So all men are 230% more likely to be raped by another man than to be falsely accused

08:19of rape.

08:20So if men could please understand that, that's fact-based, that's research-based, there's

08:24been a 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 just in terms of information.

08:52Because one of the things that was brought up when we heard from Giselle Pellicourt,

08:57when she took the stand for the second time, 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 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.

09:36From all backgrounds, from all levels of education, from all cultures, that's a really important

09:42thing 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, they're men we know.

09:55They could be men that we've known our whole lives and we could never imagine capable of

10:00doing these things.

10:01We need to change the culture into one that believes women when they speak up.

10:07You know, statistically, that false reports are so low.

10:10We've got such a big scientific body of knowledge on this now.

10:13It's between one to four percent of false reports of gender-based violence.

10:19We need to be believing women.

10:20We need to be supporting women when they come forward.

10:23And I don't know how, but we need to find a way that there's space for men to actually

10:28assume what they've done and apologise for what they've done, because all men accused

10:34of rape, all rapists say, no, it wasn't me.

10:37Like we saw in this case.

10:38I think it was something like in the Mazan case, it was 32 out of 51 of the accused have

10:43said 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.

11:02A 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.

11:16And that of her children.

11:17We often think of children as indirect victims.

11:20That's not the case.

11:21They are direct victims.

11:22So we hope that that and then we hope that Giselle gets to, she's talked about getting

11:28a psychological support.

11:29We 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.

11:46For a country that prides itself of being a country of law, we don't even have specific

11:50domestic laws.

11:51We have generalist laws that we then are used to apply to prosecute complex domestic abuse

11:56cases.

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.

12:05We need unconscious bias training for judges, because there's a lot of prejudice within

12:10our 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.

12:24Of course, Sarah McGrath, the CEO of Women for Women of France, talking about the Giselle

12:29Pellicot mass rape trial in Avignon.

12:32That's where we end this version.

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