Gisele Pelicot’s ex-husband Dominique found guilty, sentenced in mass rape trial: What to know

A French man who admitted drugging and raping his wife repeatedly over a 10-year period and inviting other men to join him in the assaults was found guilty Thursday of aggravated rape and other crimes in a case that has sparked a furious reckoning with the culture of sexual violence in the European country and around the world.

The man, 72-year-old Dominique Pelicot, was given the maximum sentence of 20 years for his crimes, which included filming the sexual assaults and distributing sexual images of both his wife and daughter without their consent.

50 other men were also found guilty of crimes in connection with the case.

The case has shocked and captivated the French public, partly because of the horrific details and because of the refusal of the primary victim, Pelicot’s wife, Gisèle Pelicot, to keep the horrific details of what happened to her under wraps.

The case ignites a larger debate about marital rape and consent in France. But it also reflects similar political issues in the US, where activists have only recently been able to reform laws that made it difficult to prosecute marital rape. Until recently, most US states had exceptions that made it difficult to charge people accused of marital rape with a felony. An American woman with an eerily similar experience to Pelicot’s helped change all that.

What happened to Gisèle Pelicot?

In 2020, Dominique Pelicot was arrested after being caught filming up a woman’s skirt in a grocery store. Police confiscated his phone and laptop and found an extensive collection of videos of Pelicot and several other men sexually assaulting his wife while she appeared to be unconscious. Gisèle Pelicot had health problems related to the drugs and the assaults, but was unaware of what was happening to her until the police showed her videos of the assaults.

Gisèle renounced the anonymity usually given to victims of sexual violence in France, arguing from the start that she had nothing to be ashamed of. Seam she told the court during her trial: “I want every female rape victim – not just when they’ve been drugged, rape exists at all levels – I want these women to say: Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can do it too. When you being raped, there is shame, and it’s not for us to be ashamed, it’s for them.”

“By refusing the closed door, Gisèle Pelicot gave a historical dimension to the trial, showing the existence of marital rape, the banality of the rapists and the extent of chemical subjugation.” Women’s Foundationa prominent women’s rights organization, said in a statement sent to Vox in French. At the same time, the group also criticized the court for giving shorter sentences to Dominique Pelicot’s co-accused. “The fight against impunity is far from over.”

By refusing to remain hidden, Gisèle Pelicot held up a mirror to some of the darkest corners of society, and in particular rape culture: Here was an ordinary woman, a grandmother, who suffered excruciating sexual violence at the hands of the person she loved and trusted. Here were a number of seemingly ordinary men – a nurse, an IT guy, a journalist and truck drivers – who took part in the crime. What did it say that so many of them had been willing to participate in such a horrible act?

A Me Too moment in France

By letting her story be told, Gisèle has become an icon in Europe. A group of protesters began gathering at the court every day and cheering her as she entered the trial. She is appeared on the digital cover of Vogue Germany and has been depicted as one larger than life mural in several cities.

Thousands of protesters have also taken to the streets to demand that the government take sexual violence more seriouslywith some protesters arguing that French law, which bans rape “by violence, coercion, threats or surprise” but does not mention consent, needs to be updated to include that rape is also sexual behavior that is not necessarily violent but takes place without permission. (Not all French feminists agreewith some arguing that the term places the onus on the victim to prove that she did not consent.)

At the end of November, a few days after the protests in France, Equality Minister Salima Saa introduced a number of proposals to raise awareness of and improve support services for victims of both sexual and domestic violence. They include expanding the number of hospitals where women can report cases of sexual violence. She also announced a new one hotline intended to help victims navigate the medical and legal processes when reporting an assault.

In an interview, Saa said there would be one “before and after” the Pelicot casejust as there was a “before and after” Me Too movement.

French survivors of sexual violence have argued that the Me Too movement never affected French culture the way it did in the United States. As Vox’s Li Zhou wrote in September, “The Pelicot case is just the latest to raise awareness of sexual assault in France this year, after several cases of sexual misconduct by prominent actors and directors came to light.”

Now France seems to be in the midst of its own revolution. French instructor Christophe Ruggia is currently on trial for allegations that he groomed and sexually assaulted actress Adèle Haenel, a star of the 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Firewhen she was a child. The trial started in December. Another sexual assault lawsuit against Gérard Depardieu, one of the country’s most famous actors, to begin in March after being postponed over the autumn. Depardieu has been accused of assault by more than a dozen women.

A showdown over marital rape in the United States

Although the Pelicot trial sparks a cultural reckoning with sexual assault years after Me Too, the case in some ways reflects a reform movement that has been quietly taking place in the United States in recent years. French feminists have argued that the country’s proud libertine culture made people less open to the Me Too movement than in the US, whose culture is relatively more conservative. But in fact, the United States has also had to reckon with marital rape.

In the United States, Marital rape has been expressly illegal in all states since 1993, the product of a feminist activist movement that successfully pressured every state legislature to update their laws. But until recently, a number of states had exceptions that made it difficult to prosecute marital rape. In some cases, people could not be charged if the person who accused them of rape was their spouse. In other cases, they were exempt if the person was incapacitated – if they had been drugged, for example.

In a case with eerie similarities to the Pelicots, in 2017 a Minnesota woman named Jenny Teeson discovered videos during a divorce from her then-husband that portrayed him raping her while he was drugged and unconscious. When Teeson brought the evidence to the police, she was shocked to find that they could not arrest him because, although marital rape was illegal, another state law included a “voluntary relationship defense”, which prohibits prosecuting someone for rape if the complainant was their spouse at the time. With the help of state lawmakers, Teeson began advocating for reform of Minnesota law, and in 2019, Governor Tim Walz signed a bill that eliminated the defense of consensual relationship and explicitly made marital rape illegal.

At the time, according to the New York Times, the majority of states had similar ones loopholes that effectively legalized some forms of marital rape. Since Teeson brought attention to the issue, other states have moved to reform their laws: Ohio closed its marital rape loophole earlier this year.

Today, most states have closed loopholes, but a few remain in states like Michiganwhere spouses cannot be prosecuted if their partner is “mentally disabled” or under the age of 16. Advocates who work with victims of sexual violence say it is critical to eliminate exceptions that allow people to get away with marital rape. A “defense should never exist based solely on a relationship,” Jennifer Long, CEO of AEquitasa nonprofit that helps develop strategies for prosecuting crimes of gender-based violence, Vox said in an email.

The questions from the Pelicot trial are also not only relevant to France and the United States – and that may be why the trial has become big news around the world. “It’s time for the macho, patriarchal society that trivializes rape to change,” Gisèle Pelicot said during the trial. Her words have resonated far beyond her homeland, implicating a culture of violence that continues around the world.