When I first read in September of the trial that had commenced in a courtroom in Avignon, France, I was so horrified and so astounded that I had to read the piece all the way through again. The circumstances were so extreme, the abuse had gone on for so long, there were so many men involved, almost all of whom were in deep denial about whether consent had been present or not.
This was despite irrefutable video evidence that Madame Gisèle Pelicot had been unconscious over the years when she was serially raped and abused by some 70 men her husband had actively sought out online. Many of them were fathers. Some of these men lived with their mothers, who were similar in age to the woman they raped. The news report listed some of the professions of those men. Truck driver. Carpenter. Prison guard. Nurse. IT expert. Journalist.
Journalist. One of our own was involved in this terrible case. I know nobody is exempt from criminality by virtue of their profession, but the fact that one man was a journalist particularly stabbed at me. If I had met this man at a party, we would have had this knowledge of the media in common; would have talked vivaciously about the challenges of the job we both do. We would have talked about big stories in the news. I would never have dreamed he would become part of one.
The professions of these men on trial in Avignon was a fleeting and temporary distraction. My focus returned almost immediately to the woman at the centre of the case, Gisèle Pelicot. She is now 72. A wife, mother, and grandmother. She had been with her husband for decades. The marriage appeared to be happy and stable, as was their relationship with their three children. Their adult children voluntarily spent time with them, and three generations of the family frequently holidayed together.
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But the marriage was neither actually happy nor stable. For years, Dominique Pelicot betrayed his wife by deliberately making her pass out from drugs he administered to her in her food, or the ice-cream she favoured to end a meal with; something like a plot out of a bad crime novel. Except this was no fiction. Then she was sexually abused by men ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s, all of whom her husband had found online and invited to their home, to rape his unconscious wife in the privacy of their own bed, while he filmed it all.
Like people all over the world, I was horrified at the scale of the abuse perpetrated on this woman; abuse deliberately created by her life-partner and the person who should have been her number one protector. For years, Pelicot needlessly worried that she was experiencing some kind of illness, or dementia, as she woke up so often feeling befuddled. Her husband, knowing exactly why she was feeling like this, pretended to be supportive by taking her to medical appointments that all masked the continuing canard going on under their roof.
As the trial continued, I kept on reading the news reports. I read the denials and excuses by the men who had been recorded by Dominique Pelicot as they abused his wife. I read about how some of these videos had been screened in court. I read about how Pelicot had surrendered her right to anonymity because she wanted her husband’s crimes, and the crimes of all these other men, to be made public: to draw attention yet again to the fact that consent is everything in any sexual relationship.
Stoically, she attended court every day. She wore sunglasses. I felt grateful on her behalf for that tiny protective barrier between her and the world’s cameras. Because almost immediately, this trial went global. The actions of one man in a small village in France, and the bravery of his ex-wife in deciding to be named in public so a national debate around consent could ignite, transformed into an international debate. It became a global story.
[ Gisèle Pelicot lambasts cowardice of men accused of her mass rapeOpens in new window ]
At the beginning of October, I sat down in my kitchen one evening, and wrote a letter to Madame Pelicot. It was the first time in my life I had ever written a letter to someone I did not personally know, and who was in the public eye. It had been the research of a minute to go online and find the address of the courtroom in Avignon where the trial was continuing to take place.
I have been fortunate enough – although in a civilised world, it should not count as fortune – to never have experienced sexual abuse of any kind in my life. I was not writing as a fellow survivor. I was writing as one woman to another: in solidarity and support; in admiration and acknowledgment of her bravery; in sympathy and empathy for what she had endured for years. I wrote that I hoped she had people around her to take care of her.
I thought too of my own late parents, especially my beloved mother. They had had an exceptionally long and happy marriage. The knowledge that Pelicot’s own long marriage was now over, in the most horrendous way possible, and the well-nigh irreparable fracture this has caused among her wider family, at a time in her life when she should be enjoying retirement in the way my own parents had, made me feel very sad.
I posted the letter while out for a walk the next day in my neighbourhood, and wondered if Pelicot could read English. It didn’t matter whether she did or not: I was absolutely confident that my letter would reach her eventually, and that someone would translate it for her, in the same way the many other letters posted to that courtroom from around the world will surely reach her, and their messages be communicated to her.
Pelicot was alone in that Mazan bedroom with her husband and abusers for years. In the Avignon courtroom, she was not alone. Women from around the world were there with her in spirit, watching and listening and thinking of her.
I salute you, Madame Pelicot.
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