Live updates on the Gisèle Pelicot trial: Fifty men convicted along with Gisèle Pelicot’s ex-husband after mass-rape trial in France

Andrew Harding
Reporting from Avignon

image source, Reuters

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

It was not just an acknowledgment of the waning autumn sunshine in the medieval southern French city of Avignon. It was also an indication that she had passed a milestone—one of many that have marked her slow, painful journey from serene grandmother, to anxiety- and shame-haunted rape victim, to fearsome courtroom witness, to global icon of courage and despite.

“She had these sunglasses she used to hide her eyes… to protect her privacy,” said Stéphane Babonneau, the young criminal lawyer who for two years guided Gisèle through the case against her ex-husband, Dominique and the 50 co-accused .

“But there was a moment when she felt she no longer needed to protect herself. She didn’t need (the glasses),” Babonneau explained, seizing that moment as a way to illustrate the slow transformation of a “sincere… very humble person”, who had begun the trial “extremely worried”, shocked by the blaze of publicity and still feeling “very ashamed of what had happened to her”.