Protesters from all over the country came out to support the woman whose husband drugged her for nearly ten years so that he and other men could rape her while she slept.
On Saturday, September 14, thousands of people demonstrated in French cities, calling for an end to rape and supporting the lead plaintiff in a shocking mass sexual assault trial.
Using her married name, Gisèle Pelicot has asked that the trial of her ex-husband and fifty other co-defendants, which began on September 2, be made public in order to increase awareness about the abuse of drugs.
Her partner of approximately fifty years, Dominique Pelicot, has acknowledged that he drugged her for years in order to either rape her or witness her being raped while unconscious by dozens of strangers he found on the internet.
France has been horrified by this case, particularly since many of the co-accused are seemingly regular men who work regular jobs, and some of the suspects are still at large.
In the French capital, a sizable gathering yelled, “We are all Gisèle.” “Victim, we believe you; rapist, we see you.”
Attendees at a rally in Place de la Rébublique show support for Gisèle Pelicot, 71, who was allegedly drugged by her former spouse and sexually assaulted by numerous men while she was unconscious.
Activists in Marseille, a city in the south of France, put up a banner on the courthouse in the city, urging the accused offenders—not the victims—to feel guilty. Through one of her lawyers, it read, quoting Gisèle Pelicot herself: “Shame must change sides.”
The 34-year-old Justine Imbert had arrived with her six-year-old daughter. Gisèle Pelicot’s request that the trial be made public “must have taken huge courage, but it was essential,” she said. “It makes her husband and all the others’ faces visible, demonstrating to others that they are “good fathers” rather than misfits.”
