For months, the world has watched a criminal trial in France: the trial of Dominique Pelicot, a 72-year-old French man who spent years drugging and raping his wife Gisèle Pelicot, and inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious. Not only that, but Dominique Pelicot documented the assaults on his wife with videos and photos. Gisèle Pelicot has become a national and international icon of survival and grace, as she wanted the case publicized. She authorized the use of her name and image to get justice. Well, after a lengthy, shocking trial, Dominique Pelicot has been convicted. Fifty other rapists were also convicted.
Dominique Pelicot, 72, who admitted to drugging his wife for almost a decade and inviting dozens of strangers he met on the internet to join him in violating her, was convicted on Thursday of aggravated rape and other charges and sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison. The verdict capped a trial that has horrified France, prompted profound discussions about rape culture and toxic masculinity, and turned Gisèle Pelicot, his wife of 50 years, into a feminist hero.
Five judges also convicted the 50 other defendants, with the head judge, Roger Arata, reading out guilty verdicts, one after the other, to a packed courtroom in Avignon, in southern France. In addition, Mr. Pelicot was found guilty of raping the wife of one of the men who was convicted, and of taking and distributing photos of Ms. Pelicot; his daughter, Caroline; and two daughters-in-law.
The case has reverberated worldwide as its shocking details came to light. From the moment of his arrest in late 2020, Mr. Pelicot has admitted to crushing sleeping pills into his wife’s food and drink before he and other men raped her as she lay nearly comatose in their bedroom in the town of Mazan. He took thousands of video clips and photos of the encounters, which the police later used to identify and track down other perpetrators.
Ms. Pelicot, 72, who has divorced her husband, waived anonymity to make the trial public, and her poise and courage have made her widely admired in France. Her face has appeared on nightly TV newscasts, the front pages of newspapers, graffitied walls and signs held up by protesters around the country. She has renounced her former surname but has used it during the trial.
How did Dominique Pelicot not get a life sentence? He was guilty of thousands of crimes, thousands of violations. As for the other men… their sentences were mostly for eight-to-ten years (the prosecution asked for 10-18-year sentences). The sentencing and the whole case has set off a debate about France’s criminal code, and whether France needs to redefine “rape” to include sex without consent. The 50 other convicted rapists were called “Monsieur Tout-le-monde” (Mr. Every Man) in the French media because they really were just “regular guys,” neighbors of the Pelicots, “truck drivers, carpenters and trade workers, a prison guard, a nurse, an I.T. expert working for a bank, a local journalist.” Horrific.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- Le procès dit “les viols de Mazan” se déroule actuellement au Palais de Justice d’Avignon et se poursuivra jusqu’au 20 décembre. Gisèle Pélicot,Image: 909036272, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: William Cannarella/Panoramic/Avalon
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- Le procès dit “les viols de Mazan” se déroule actuellement au Palais de Justice d’Avignon et se poursuivra jusqu’au 20 décembre. Gisèle Pélicot et ses avocats.,Image: 910966153, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: William Cannarella/Panoramic/Avalon
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- Le procès dit “les viols de Mazan” se déroule actuellement au Palais de Justice d’Avignon et se poursuivra jusqu’au 20 décembre. Gisèle Pélicot et son avocat Stéphane Babonneau.,Image: 911070121, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: William Cannarella/Panoramic/Avalon
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- Le procès dit “les viols de Mazan” se déroule actuellement au Palais de Justice d’Avignon et se poursuivra jusqu’au 20 décembre. Gisèle Pélicot et l’un de ses avocats, Maître Antoine Camus.,Image: 911072125, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: William Cannarella/Panoramic/Avalon
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- Le procès dit “les viols de Mazan” se déroule actuellement au Palais de Justice d’Avignon et se poursuivra jusqu’au 20 décembre. Gisèle Pélicot,Image: 911072153, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: William Cannarella/Panoramic/Avalon
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- Proces des viols de Mazan une fresque peinte en hommage a Gisele Pelicot a Gentilly,Image: 913113512, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: Jonathan Rebboah/Panoramic/Avalon
Probably a life sentence.
As it should be
She’s a remarkable woman in a way no person should have to be. May she find true peace and joy.
At 72, yes. It couldn’t be higher than 20 years because that’s the maximum allowed for such a crime in France. France laws regarding rape and sexual assaults are outdated by a century or 3.
Parking how I feel about the sentencing for now, Giséle gets my vote for person of the year. I don’t have the words to describe how I feel about this woman right now.
She is my person of the year.
This is effectively a life sentence, however, the pronouncement of a life sentence should have been what happened.
But I’m American and I don’t know about sentencing in other countries, beyond the fact our sentencing is far longer than comparable Western developed countries.
Amazing how French police were able to use the evidence to convict 50 accomplices, but US law enforcement can’t do the same for Epstein.
Absolutely Person of the Year. Should have been her on the cover of Time. That would have really made a point instead of the Orange one.
@Megan I think it’s because her rapists were “every man” types, whereas Epstein’s cohorts were men with money and status and power, etc.
ITA. Her story is so harrowing, and her composure throughout and her determination to see it through is incredible. No sentence they could give to her ex and the men who raped her would be enough, but I hope this will bring her whatever “closure” is after such a horrific ordeal, and that she finds peace and happiness and security.
I totally agree on Person of the Year. Was she even on their radar, or was it just Kitty’s cancer? I have been astounded at Gisele’s fortitude throughout. Hope she finds peace in her remaining years.
There is a DV and Femicide activist in Australia who has made the most incredible shirt dedicated to this warrior. 100% of proceeds also go towards the Red Heart Campaign which support women and children lost to violence.
https://redheart.theprintbar.com/shop/view_product/23039141/PERSON-OF-THE-YEAR-GISELE-PELICOT
French here. Life sentences are rare, and he was sentenced to the maximum sentence provided for in our penal code.
Thanks for clarifying.
Even if it proves to be a life sentence, it isn’t enough.
The codes should be examined.
His wife, his daughter, his daughter-in- law!!!!
HIs brain should be examined to figure out the deficiencies.
It’s difficult to wrap your brain around, but it actually gets worse. After learning of what he’d done, his grandchildren recalled memories of blinking red lights in the rooms where they played (being recorded) and of their grandfather reportedly being sad when they didn’t want to play doctor anymore…
There are some cases where I think the death penalty makes sense, and I am against the death penalty. What that man did is so heinous that I wonder how a human being could do it to another human being!
amen. when i read about this case i felt sick all day. i don’t know how she goes. on. f**ker
I’m the opposite. He should fulfill his entire term of imprisonment and face the knowledge of his crimes every day. Executing a criminal doesn’t even the score, doesn’t restore any measure of justice. It’s barbaric and makes the state little better than the criminal.
this man should be confronted with the evidence of his evil, depraved behaviour every single day of his existence. His entire family has disowned him, so I doubt he’ll ever have a visitor. maybe some other inmate will give him a taste of what he did to his wife.
I remember thinking something similar when the Golden State Killer was sentenced. For an old man to spend the rest of his life in prison is pretty grim. It’s not enough, but it’s a start.
Well said, Maisie. Let this man slowly rot–no easy outs.
I hope he stays nice and healthy for at least 19 1/2 years, with lots and lots of arthritis.
He was sentenced the maximum sentence he could have for this. Laws are obviously not the same between different countries, so he was not judged by American laws, of course…
Exactly. Doesn’t mean the French laws shouldn’t change, but this was the maximum he could have gotten. It’s important not to judge one country’s laws by the laws of another.
This is not specific to rape, sentences for all kind of things are lighter in France than in the US. It’s more a us particularity than a French one btw. US sentences are notoriously harsher /longer than in most other countries. To each their own, but I don’t think the us should be a model for other countries…
@chlo, it would be interesting to know if the other countries run a ‘for profit’ prison system like the U.S.? The longer they keep a prisoner, the more money they make as prisons are FOR profit in the US, same as their ‘health care’.
US penal system was heavily influenced by emancipation and is a net to enslave as many people of color as it can.
The history of Parchment Farm and Angola shows that clearly.
When you thrall like that you will catch other.
I would understand, one man can be so evil to do such a thing to his wife, but all these men who accepted this man’s offer, those who rejected his offer, but didn’t say a thing to anyone, that is the real scary part. It is so f*cking traumatizing to be a woman in this world.
You summed up my feelings exactly. 😳
the desire to rape appears to be more widespread. One of the guys who raped Pellicot did the same thing to his wife (something uncovered by this trial)
“Antoine Camus, the lawyer for Gisèle Pelicot, has previously likened the Coco website to the “murder weapon” used by Dominique Pelicot. Although the site has been shut down, a CNN investigation uncovered several French websites where sexual violence towards women is still being encouraged and promoted.
CNN investigated one website which has been trying to take Coco’s place, using tools to extract 6,000 messages from 30 chatrooms for 24 hours.
After going through the messages, clear parallels were found between messages sent by Pelicot to recruit men and messages on the new site.” [CNN]
Yeah, that guy, I just learned … Jean Pierre Maréchal, sentenced to 12 yrs, not for raping Gisele, but for drugging & raping his own wife under the tutelage of Dominique who supplied the tranqs used. Maréchal invited him to assault his wife in return.
I think it’s a fair sentence. The US is more into punishment and Europe tends to be more into rehab. I’m very glad that Gisele Pelicot got seen, heard, empathized with, and justice. Every man they had evidence for was guilty–that’s incredibly rare! I admire her courage, her sacrificing her anonimity to support other women, and restarting her life as a senior citizen who has had to reevaluate her “illness and forgetfulness” and her relationship to everyone in her community. The fact that she was roofied and it led to guilty verdicts–I hope this helps with other victims as well.
What I have learned of the French culture and how they treat women, oh, it makes me so sad. I hope some things change because of this brave woman. And if they need help finding the other 20+ men who raped her, we have lots of talented internet sleuths who found the Jan 6th rioters.
Yes the other twenty need to be found and jailed ASAP. Of the seventy something men that went to that house and saw a drugged, vulnerable woman only three walked away. They never informed authorities of what they need either, just walked away and left her to suffer further.
All these men lived within 50km of this woman, some in her local village that saw her everyday. It’s horrifying.
Seriously how do you not go to the police?
I hope they all rot.
“What I have learned of the French culture and how they treat women, oh, it makes me so sad.”
Sorry, but this is pretty delusional to think it couldn’t/wouldn’t/ didn’t happen in the US…
OP didn’t say that though. And the thing is, to our knowledge, it hasn’t happened here–YET.
There’s a huge masculinist movement in France right now and misogyny is on the rise, which is alarming to French authorities and sociologists. That particular brand of Andrew Tate-inspired toxic masculinity def exists in the US too and has proven to have deadly consequences when it arrives in the form of a school shooter.
But the US has been studying the effect of rising misogyny for years now whereas France is just starting to understand how much more prevalent sexual assault is in French society–far more so than they previously thought. At least they are beginning to take more proactive measures to address what appears to be a growing problem.
Sorry, but the rising masculinity movement and all of that comes mainly from the US, not France. There have been plenty of cases of rape where the woman has been drugged in the US too, it’s just that no one really cared to report extensively on it, or waive anonymity like Gisèle Pelicot has done. I’m a woman who’s lived in both countries and I can assure you the toxic masculinity movement is way worse in the US.
One glaring example is abortion. While it is on the way to be completely forbidden in the US, a law was passed in France to guarantee the right to it, and was approved by pretty much all parties. There are many many more examples like this.
I’m not sure where you got the whole “they haven’t studied it yet” but that’s not based in reality at all…
Agree with CH. In the west, the misogynist movement started in the US and is spreading like cancer to France and other non-English speaking countries. It comes mainly from social media, especially TikTok, and is coordinated propaganda from paid influencer accounts that takes hold and spreads organically. The US split in youth male/female votes this past election is an excellent example of this.
Regarding influencer-driven political propaganda messaging, issues have been condensed for 2 second attention spans and further reduced into a set of five or six main themes. In the Anglosphere, almost all politics are being reduced to this, even in “news” reporting, and the same themes are repeated on a global level. Male vs female is just one theme. France has historically been buffered due to the language barrier, but eventually global corporate propaganda messaging starts to creep in.
I am also sad about how women are treated in South Korea, the Middle East, Afghanistan, my own country, the entire world! But, this article is about France. I read yesterday that French women when they tried to report a rape, were laughed at by the police, that the hospitals refuse perform exams for evidence, tell women who were drugged to ‘come back tomorrow’ for a blood draw, which means no evidence of the drug will be in their system. I am not saying one country or one region of the world is worse or better in how it treats women. Simply that I didn’t know the details of how French culture treated women. Knowing details is different. It’s okay to say that right? It’s not a judgment, just my feelings about this particular incident at this particular time. Tomorrow it will be another woman in another country.
@ Bumblebee- YES it’s ok to say that. I realize that anecdotal evidence is not empirical evidence but FWIW my mom grew up in France. She’s 78 years old and PHEW the stories she’s told me about her experiences with French men. There’s a reason why she married my American father and it wasn’t just because he’s tall.
My mom was molested by a neighborhood when she was a child and her own father knocked her two front teeth out with a broom (too graphic to describe what he did to his wife) so yeah…I’m sorry but the masculinity movement is not some new imported mindset that came from America–it has been alive and well (EVERYWHERE) for decades but is being exacerbated by social media and backlash to the #MeToo movement.
And not to say that there are not a ton of AMAZING French men (hell I have many in my family) who are true allies but it’s a fundamental misperception to say that misogyny is somehow exclusive to one region of the world—France is not somehow immune to problematic men.
https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20240126-growing-masculinist-culture-in-france-slows-down-fight-against-sexism
@ CH-France’s HCE (an agency that’s only 10 years old) does one annual survey every year of 2500 people that focuses on male attitudes toward women. Sorry but that doesn’t seem enough to me. And I’m not shitting on France (I’m a French citizen too, guys) or trying to have a pissing contest on which country is more misogynistic. But the denial and blame feels misplaced here…it reminds me of some of my French friends and relatives blaming Trump for Le Pen when we know that RW fascism is on the rise globally.
And I don’t mind discussing regional differences in male attitudes towards women but the notion that one country has a monopoly on misogyny irks me.
I’m an American who has been living in France for a number of years. I am in a very male-dominated profession and I’ve had much lesser problems with overtly misogynistic French men like I’ve had in the past with men from a variety of Anglo, Latin, or Slavic cultures for example. I honestly find French culture to be much less hostile to women, although it could just be my experience as a foreigner there as well. The problem here is MEN, not cultures. If certain men have the opportunity to rape, they will do it.
One recent example is the Lilly Phillips case from the USA. Although seemingly an example of “consent” (more like grooming) and not the same as Gisèle’s case, in both cases men will not stop to think about what is right or wrong and how their acts of violence will impact the victim. As long as men and capitalism allow women to be treated as objects and commodities to be used and sold, rape and sexual violence will never be considered “real” crimes.
It’s so nice to see her with a smile on her face. This is a woman EMPOWERED by the trauma. She turned it on its head and found her voice at last, over all the men who silenced her. This is something I want for all women.
I hope she can find some peace now. At the very least.
What this woman went through is so F’ed up and I’m glad she not only got her day in court, with the best outcome possible given the French penal code and sentencing – thank you to the French commenters who have chimed in. I am glad she was able to do it without hiding her identify. No judgment for anyone that would have done it anonymously, or has reported anonymously! But I admire her very much for being brave and not ashamed or embarrassed to give her name. I hope that she is able to find peace and takes pride knowing she is a role model to other victims of rape and assault across the world.
What I would like to point out, and this is not about centering the story around that person, is that whenever we ask men to be allies and tell them that only they can change things, they get defensive and mumble “not all men“. This case has both ends of the spectrum. There are men who testified that they found the posts on the dark web, were horrified and did not respond or participate. Apparently, they want a freaking medal! How about reporting it? Going to the police? That would’ve been helpful. And on the other end, this whole story blew wide open because one security guard in a supermarket stopped Dominique Pelicot because he was filming up a woman’s skirt. The footage of the surveillance cameras of that day were released through the press. You clearly hear the guy explain to the woman how important it is for her to press charges, that this guy is a creep and that he should not get away with it. She did it and that’s what set the whole thing in motion, for those who are not familiar with the entire story. Because of that event, the police searched his house and found the evidence of all the horrific crimes he committed. That’s what we expect from men. Get your guys! Set them straight!
I had no idea about that backstory — incredible. Thanks for sharing that.
The whole case was awful and those men need to be tossed in jail for life.
She exemplifies courage to me. I hope she finds peace and happiness. I hope her abusers rot.
We should all be thankful to this brave woman.
When she stated that she wasn’t the one who needed to be ashamed, she was hell right. Those who need to hide are the abusers not the victims.
Only 20 years for the rape and sexual trafficking of his own wife. This is how you know many people in the government must have skeletons in the closet that these laws have never been updated.
Why are men in charge of ANYTHING, anywhere?
He was always going to get convicted but I know Americans are more used to harsher sentences. It’s better than what they gave Brock Turner (a measly 6 months and he only served 3). Since he’s 72, it’s essentially a life sentence. Even if he lives to his 90s, he’ll be old and won’t be able to do much when he leaves prison and guessing his kids will want nothing to do with him if he’s released. Gisele is a hero and while I can’t imagine the PTSD she’ll have to endure for the rest of her life, I hope she knows she has done so much for other SA victims everywhere.
I hope she has some sense of just how much she’s done for women around the world. She’s a superhero.
This woman is a hero. If this had taken place in the US, I’m not sure all these men would even have ben convicted. I hope she can find peace and has an absolutely wonderful life from here on.
20 years is the maximum punishment for any crime in a lot of european countries.
Even serial killers can only get 20 years.
Anders Breivik killed 69 people, mostly kids, and he got 21 years.
Parole hearings after 10 years.
When will Trump nominate the husband to his cabinet?