Gisèle Pelicot raises her glasses and chooses to fight back

Warning: This story contains descriptions of alleged sex crimes.

There was a moment, a few weeks into the trial, when Gisèle Pelicot decided it was time to take off her sunglasses.

It wasn’t just about acknowledging the fading autumn sunlight in the ancient southern French town of Avignon. And it was a sign that she had passed a milestone – one of many that marked her slow, painful journey from calm grandmother, to heartbroken and humiliated rape victim, to fearsome court witness, to global icon of courage and defiance.

“She had these glasses that she used to hide her eyes … to protect her intimacy,” said Stéphane Babonneau, a young lawyer who has been guiding Mrs. Pelicot for two years in the case against her ex-husband, Dominique, and now fifty other men. in the rape case.

“But there was a time when he felt like he didn’t need to defend himself anymore. He didn’t need to [the glasses],” explained Mr. Babonneau, seizing at the time as a way to show the gradual transformation of “an honest man… very humble”, who had started the trial “very worried”, frightened by the public fire, and who still felt “very difficult. ashamed of what happened to him”.

During the trial, Gisèle Pelicot, 72, said nothing about her ordeal, except for occasional and brief comments to supporters gathered at Avignon’s Palais de Justice.

But Mr. Babonneau, speaking now with the blessing of his client, has begun to give us an insight into his behavior in court, and how he has gradually tried to rebuild his life and, to a lesser extent, his peace of mind.

Another moment – and a milestone – comes out.

It was earlier this year, in May. Mr Babonneau and his partner Antoine Camus have been looking at some of the 20,000 disturbing videos and graphic images found by police in 2020 on Dominique Pelicot’s hard drive.

Bad job. The videos were “absolutely disgusting,” Mr Babonneau said. But the sound was almost too shocking.

“It is possible to hear Mrs. Pelicot snoring… feel her breathing. It is even more disturbing to listen to her being strangled while other men abuse her. The sound was very important [evidence].”

Mr. Babonneau knew that without those videos, “it is possible that there would be no crime, no crime”.

Mrs. Pelicot also understood that, but she could easily and understandably decide, on her own understanding, to avoid watching any film herself.

Instead, Mr. Babonneau recalls, he simply announced one day: “I’m ready now.”

So, he sat down next to these two men, in their office, as he presented a carefully selected portion of each video, explaining who these men were, and what he would see them do to him. Mr. Babonneau then pressed play and pictures of the Pelicots’ room appeared, in their bedroom in the village of Mazan.

Gisèle sat quietly, watching.

“How could he do it?” he finally asked in a calm voice. It was a sentence he would repeat over and over in the days to come.

After a while, he marked the date on one of the videos.

“That was my birthday evening.”

“That happened in [my] daughter’s bed. In his beach house.”

Mr. Babonneau remembers Mrs. Pelicot’s constant anger, but also noted that she never cried, and that with the help of a professional, she was able to “put an incredible distance between what she was seeing and her mental health.”

The lawyers saw this period as a “final test” showing that their client has regained “some form of equality” four years since November 4, 2020, when she was informed of her husband’s actions and that “her world has been destroyed.”

Now he was ready to face the rigors of a public trial.

Mrs Pelicot wanted to look at the pictures to understand who all these men were, and to help fill in the gaps in her memory, caused by her husband’s years of drug addiction.

“He has his whole life out of his mind,” Mr Babonneau explained.

The same practical concerns began to shape his decision to opt for a public trial, and to force the videos to be shown in open court.

He was very angry, indeed. But at that time he was not looking to change the world. He was just terrified of the idea of ​​spending months inside a closed courtroom filled with dozens of his tormentors. He thought that a public trial would not be so scary.

The first day of the trial was still painful. Wearing sunglasses, Mrs Pelicot was making her first appearance in public. And it got worse. Walking beside him up the stairs leading to the courtroom, Mr. Babonneau noticed and saw some of the suspects, wearing masks.

But Mrs. Pelicot slowly realized that she was now surrounded by them, elbows bumping each other as they scrambled to get past these safety barriers.

“It was very stressful for him. He was surprised that everything seemed normal,” Mr Babonneau recalled.

Then came the moment – the first in four years – when Gisèle and Dominique Pelicot’s eyes met in a crowded courtroom. Their seats were arranged as if to prevent such contact.

“I’ve seen sometimes that they’re taking turns,” Mr. Babonneau noted. Gisèle had spoken many times to her team about her concerns about how she might react when meeting each other for the first time.

We now know that when he testified in court Dominique Pelicot admitted everything and that he asked for forgiveness from his family. We also know that Gisèle Pelicot has not forgiven him.

“Of course, no. He won’t be able to forgive him,” said Mr. Babonneau.

However, this couple was once deeply in love. They were married for fifty years. And in court, Mr Babonneau could tell himself that the former couple could not completely ignore what had passed. So, what did the lawyer see in those mutual eyes?

It was as if they were “looking at us,” said Mr. Babonneau.

He felt that they shared a common sense of disbelief. Almost like, briefly, spectators watching the travails of two strangers.

“How did we get here?”

During the trial, lawyers for the various accused tried to suggest that Gisèle’s calmness, her lack of crying, meant that she was somehow complicit in her abuse. Or that he sympathized with Dominique Pelicot.

“If the victim does not cry, or cries a lot, there is always someone who criticizes,” said Mr. Babonneau, showing contempt.

But while the attack clearly traumatized Mrs Pelicot, she also told her legal team not to worry.

There was a simple reason for that. Nothing the lawyers could throw at him in court could be compared to the worst moment in his life, that day in November 2020, when a police officer sat him down at the Carpentras police station and showed him the first terrible photos released by investigators. from her husband’s hard drive.

“You know I survived November 2, 2020, so I’m ready for everything now,” Babonneau recalled saying.

As the case progressed, Gisèle Pelicot was surprised to find that public and media interest was not going as well as she and her team thought it would. Instead, he began receiving letters and gifts and applause from cheering crowds.

“When he first received these letters, he felt a sense of responsibility for the victims who suffered in the same way,” said Babonneau.

He understood the uniqueness of his case – that the video evidence meant that it was not just “the voice of the victim against the voice of the suspect”, and that now he had a rare opportunity to “change society”.

“I am lucky to have proof. I have proof, which is very rare. Therefore, I have to pass. [all this] to represent all victims,” ​​he told Mr Babonneau.

His lawyer also noted that his client is “simple,” realistic. She is not interested in being an “activist”, but she just thinks that her experience of being drugged without realizing it, can now help make other women aware of this issue, and look for possible signs of similar abuse.

If he had known then what the whole of France knows now, perhaps he would have ended his misery.

And maybe other women can now do the same.

As for the future, Ms. Pelicot may, perhaps, break her silence with a few interviews in the coming months. But he made it clear that he wants to “remain human… he wants to live a very simple life.”

And while she may never forgive her former “perfect” husband, she has found a way to control her memories of him and cling to the “happy times” they once shared.

Some psychiatrists argue that Dominique Pelicot is a typical psychopath – a high-functioning narcissist with no capacity for empathy who made a connection between his dirty hidden life and the pleasure of playing the role of a family man. Gisèle Pelicot sees things easily, she accepts the idea, put forward in the case, of different personalities.

As Mr. Babonneau put it, “there were two men in Dominique Pelicot and he knew only one of them.”

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