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