Berliner Boersenzeitung - Gisele Pelicot: France rape survivor who became a feminist hero

EUR -
AED 4.066612
AFN 79.215563
ALL 99.394812
AMD 432.612664
ANG 1.98204
AOA 1014.155023
ARS 1189.500856
AUD 1.771965
AWG 1.992881
AZN 1.875174
BAM 1.957667
BBD 2.233831
BDT 134.41822
BGN 1.950805
BHD 0.417314
BIF 3288.136516
BMD 1.107156
BND 1.47831
BOB 7.644292
BRL 6.235059
BSD 1.106355
BTN 94.452097
BWP 15.312607
BYN 3.620554
BYR 21700.259628
BZD 2.22232
CAD 1.560481
CDF 3180.859262
CHF 0.946635
CLF 0.027396
CLP 1051.311216
CNY 8.061812
CNH 8.029102
COP 4598.849665
CRC 557.431728
CUC 1.107156
CUP 29.339637
CVE 110.370281
CZK 25.083673
DJF 197.007924
DKK 7.461302
DOP 69.866645
DZD 147.22299
EGP 56.009032
ERN 16.607342
ETB 145.630515
FJD 2.562951
FKP 0.853305
GBP 0.845845
GEL 3.044842
GGP 0.853305
GHS 17.148358
GIP 0.853305
GMD 79.15417
GNF 9574.132655
GTQ 8.539145
GYD 231.460788
HKD 8.607236
HNL 28.306001
HRK 7.526893
HTG 144.768093
HUF 403.61159
IDR 18538.996806
ILS 4.095315
IMP 0.853305
INR 94.331358
IQD 1449.282454
IRR 46611.272281
ISK 144.306145
JEP 0.853305
JMD 174.256221
JOD 0.78486
JPY 161.608272
KES 143.000189
KGS 96.003282
KHR 4425.221168
KMF 498.772803
KPW 996.500324
KRW 1586.41177
KWD 0.340605
KYD 0.921979
KZT 554.629054
LAK 23967.862669
LBP 99189.688474
LKR 328.553403
LRD 221.271068
LSL 20.852891
LTL 3.269144
LVL 0.669708
LYD 5.350103
MAD 10.522237
MDL 19.758848
MGA 5045.813143
MKD 61.477868
MMK 2324.423262
MNT 3867.803674
MOP 8.864856
MRU 43.965939
MUR 49.832916
MVR 17.046744
MWK 1918.429968
MXN 22.10652
MYR 4.897502
MZN 70.758498
NAD 20.852891
NGN 1700.137728
NIO 40.708832
NOK 11.469517
NPR 151.123155
NZD 1.934047
OMR 0.426249
PAB 1.106355
PEN 4.062475
PGK 4.564354
PHP 62.941884
PKR 310.325616
PLN 4.228954
PYG 8876.46716
QAR 4.032847
RON 4.977439
RSD 117.164777
RUB 93.002193
RWF 1578.705909
SAR 4.153496
SBD 9.207478
SCR 15.833441
SDG 664.845779
SEK 10.833783
SGD 1.475906
SHP 0.870051
SLE 25.187838
SLL 23216.51111
SOS 632.303147
SRD 40.466832
STD 22915.896003
SVC 9.680234
SYP 14396.020325
SZL 20.860899
THB 37.756244
TJS 12.042387
TMT 3.875046
TND 3.385229
TOP 2.593067
TRY 42.079959
TTD 7.501155
TWD 36.393104
TZS 2945.035321
UAH 45.669864
UGX 4031.845931
USD 1.107156
UYU 46.73458
UZS 14288.62976
VES 77.67975
VND 28570.16325
VUV 136.810609
WST 3.136388
XAF 656.583307
XAG 0.035021
XAU 0.000356
XCD 2.992145
XDR 0.816579
XOF 656.583307
XPF 119.331742
YER 271.973297
ZAR 20.870474
ZMK 9965.736936
ZMW 30.728311
ZWL 356.503814
  • RBGPF

    69.0200

    69.02

    +100%

  • CMSC

    -0.2400

    22.26

    -1.08%

  • NGG

    3.6100

    69.39

    +5.2%

  • SCS

    -0.7200

    10.74

    -6.7%

  • BP

    -2.4700

    31.34

    -7.88%

  • RIO

    -1.4700

    58.43

    -2.52%

  • AZN

    1.7000

    73.92

    +2.3%

  • RELX

    0.4600

    51.44

    +0.89%

  • BTI

    1.6700

    41.92

    +3.98%

  • GSK

    1.3700

    39.01

    +3.51%

  • CMSD

    -0.1600

    22.67

    -0.71%

  • RYCEF

    -0.0200

    9.78

    -0.2%

  • JRI

    -0.2200

    12.82

    -1.72%

  • BCC

    -7.4400

    94.63

    -7.86%

  • BCE

    0.8400

    22.66

    +3.71%

  • VOD

    0.2500

    9.37

    +2.67%

Gisele Pelicot: France rape survivor who became a feminist hero
Gisele Pelicot: France rape survivor who became a feminist hero / Photo: Christophe SIMON - AFP

Gisele Pelicot: France rape survivor who became a feminist hero

Her husband orchestrating her sexual abuse by strangers could have broken her. But by standing up to her abusers in court and demanding they be ashamed, France's Gisele Pelicot has become a feminist champion.

Text size:

Three and a half months of sometimes gruelling hearings, including graphic video evidence, are set to culminate when judges hand down sentences by the end of next week.

When the trial of her now ex-husband and 50 other defendants opened in the French city of Avignon in September, journalists saw a woman with short red hair, hiding behind sunglasses.

The main victim in the case that shocked France was a grandmother whose life partner had admitted to drugging her for almost a decade so he and dozens of strangers he recruited online could rape her while unconscious.

But then Gisele Pelicot waived her right to anonymity and demanded the public be allowed access to the trial to raise awareness about drug use to commit abuse.

She won hearts across France and abroad, and triggered a flurry of art in her honour, after she said it was her abusers -- not her -- who should be ashamed.

"I wanted all women who are rape victims to say to themselves: 'Mrs Pelicot did it, so we can do it too'," she told the court in October.

"It's not us who should feel shame, but them," she added, referring to perpetrators.

As news of the trial spread, protests erupted across France to show support and fans started cheering her or even greeting her with flowers when she arrived in court.

And over the trial's course, Gisele Pelicot shed her dark sunglasses.

- 'Rape is rape' -

As the verdict on December 19 or 20 approaches, the 72-year-old has made it onto the BBC's 100 Women list for 2024, alongside fellow mass rape survivor and Nobel Prize winner Nadia Murad and Hollywood actor Sharon Stone.

Pelicot in August obtained a divorce from her husband, who has confessed to the abuse after meticulously documenting it with photos and videos.

She has moved away from the southern town of Mazan where, in her own words, her husband Dominique Pelicot treated her like "a piece of meat" or a "rag doll" for years.

She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her former name as a married woman -- the one passed on to some of her seven grandchildren.

In mid-September, she dropped her usual reserve to talk of her humiliation and her anger towards several lawyers who had made insinuations about her ordeal.

"Rape is rape," she said.

In October, she said she was "broken" but determined to change society.

She again told the court last month it was time for a "macho, patriarchal" society to shift its attitude towards rape.

She said the marathon hearings were an examination of the "cowardice" of the men who took part in the assaults.

Many had argued they thought they were taking part in a couple's fantasy after consent by proxy through her husband.

She expressed her anger that none of her abusers alerted the police about the rapes, which occurred between 2011 and 2020.

Several took part in the abuse six times.

Fifty men besides her 72-year-old ex-husband are on trial, including one who did not rape Gisele Pelicot but repeatedly abused his own wife with Dominique Pelicot's help.

Several of the co-defendants have admitted to rape.

But more than 20 other suspects remain at large as investigators had not managed to identify them before the start of the mass trial.

- Memory lapses -

The daughter of a member of the military, Gisele Pelicot was born on December 7, 1952 in Germany, returning to France with her family when she was five.

When she was nine, her mother, aged just 35, died of cancer.

Her older brother Michel died of a heart attack aged 43, before her 20th birthday.

She met Dominique Pelicot, her future husband and rapist, in 1971.

She had dreamt of becoming a hairdresser but instead studied to be a typist. After a few years temping, she joined France's national electricity company EDF, ending her career in a logistics service for its nuclear power plants.

At home, she looked after her three children, then seven grandchildren.

After she retired, she enjoyed walking and singing in a local choir.

Only when the police caught her husband filming up women's skirts in a supermarket in 2020 did she find out the true reason behind her troubling memory lapses.

(A.Lehmann--BBZ)