One year on from Gisèle Pelicot, do men know how women really feel about them?

On 19 December 2024, Dominique Pelicot and 50 others were sentenced for the mass rape and assault of Gisèle Pelicot while she was unconscious. It was a case that shocked the world – and many of us are still questioning the men around us, says Victoria Richards

A year ago today, Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men were sentenced to a total of 428 years in prison after being found guilty of raping and sexually assaulting Gisèle Pelicot, now 73, in Avignon, France. Dominique – Gisèle’s husband, who received a 20 year prison term for aggravated rape – had drugged and abused his then-wife and invited dozens of strangers to rape her over a period lasting almost a decade.

Although Pelicot admitted the charges against him, saying unequivocally "I am a rapist" and describing himself as “the devil”, most of the other men on trial had denied what they did was rape. Still, on December 19, 2024, a panel of five judges delivered their damning verdicts: of the 50 co-defendants, 46 were found guilty of rape, two were found guilty of attempted rape and two were found guilty of sexual assault.

It is, to date, France’s most shocking mass rape case and when the trial began in September last year, swiftly becoming headline news, women worldwide were left reeling. The effects of Dominique Pelicot’s crimes devastated Gisèle and her family – she described her internal state as a “field of ruins” in court – and us along with them. We couldn’t help looking around at our own husbands, brothers and neighbours; our fathers, sons and friends.

We asked ourselves this: if a man like Dominique could drug his wife of 50 years for nine years, undetected; giving her sedatives (prescription sleeping pills) before raping her and inviting men he recruited online via a chat forum to have sex with her in their bed at home while she was unconscious, what were other men – other regular men, men just like those men – capable of?

We looked at the line of “Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde” (“Mr Everyman”) winding out of court in Avignon – one a DJ, another a journalist, some firefighters and lorry drivers; others security guards, construction workers and soldiers. These weren’t monsters, that much was clear. These were – simply, devastatingly – just men. Ordinary men: some lonely, some with lower than average IQ, others intelligent and successful. Some young, others old, of all different ethnicities. There was no singular thread to link them, except that they all lived in close proximity to the Pelicots – and that when the chance came up to abuse a sleeping woman, they took it. And then they absolved themselves from guilt.

We heard that one defendant, Joseph C, then 69, was a retired sports coach and “doting grandfather”. His lawyer said he was “put in a situation where they were scammed" and was "taken for a ride". Another, known as Romain V, 63, who was knowingly HIV-positive when he raped Gisèle on six separate occasions, said in his defence he was “looking for social connection”.

Similarly, "my body raped her, but my brain didn't" was the justification offered by volunteer firefighter Christian L; while the majority claimed they were “manipulated” or “tricked” by Dominique Pelicot, saying he had convinced them they were taking part in a “consensual sex game”. Other lawyers questioned whether Gisèle was ever really asleep, at all; presumably to try to place some of the blame on her for her own abuse. The mayor of Mazan, Louis Bonnet, had to go into hiding after downplaying the grievousness of the case with the words “no one died”.

One of the reasons women everywhere found this case so shocking was that we couldn’t “other” these men. We couldn’t comfort ourselves – and some small and trivial comfort it might have been – to imagine them as a ripple in the fabric of society. Had they travelled far and wide to take part in this heinousness, we might have considered they were the scourge of their own towns and cities; that they were grotesque “trauma tourists”, willing to go the distance to satisfy some sick need. But they weren’t.

Most of the 50 co-defendants came from towns and villages within just a 30-mile radius of Mazan, where the Pelicots lived. If they could be described perhaps as “opportunist”, they also all made the conscious choice not to go to the police. Jacques C, 73, a former firefighter, said in fact that he had considered reporting it but "then life just carried on". Another, an electrician – Patrice N, 55 – said he "didn't want to waste the whole day at the police station". What that tells women everywhere is that when it comes to respect, care, compassion and personal safety, we mean almost nothing – not even enough to “bother” missing a day of work.

I’ve since read books about the trial, fascinated to find out what made these men do this; why a regular sample of men in one French province did this; how any man (or, “Everyman”) could possibly do this. I want, like so many women, to understand how I can come to terms with being in relationships with men after feeling so haunted by their actions in Avignon. And I want men to know how deeply we women have been affected by the actions of their peers – to appreciate how it bleeds, even now, into our everyday. How it deepens the fear we felt after other brutal attacks on women: Sarah Everard, Zara Aleena, Sabina Nessa. That Gisèle Pelicot’s name is similarly burned on to our lips. We want to hear that it haunts them, just as much as it haunts us.

In Living with Men, by the philosopher Manon Garcia – who attended the trial in Mazan – she writes: “How can we love one another if men follow the trial from afar like some random news item that does not concern them, while women see it in traces of their daily lives? How can we not superimpose over oral sex the repeated rape of Gisèle Pelicot’s mouth that we saw in those videos? How do we build on the field of ruins that is male sexuality?”

So, a year on from these verdicts, has anything changed? If we thought France had, after having its seedy underbelly of abuse and women-hating exposed, then we are to be sorely disappointed: just last month, in an eerie echo of the Pelicot case, more than 200 women alleged they were drugged by a senior French civil servant during a job interview. Dozens of victims came forward to report being given hot drinks mixed with a diuretic to make them urinate, after being invited to Paris to attend a job interview by Christian Nègre, a human resources manager at the French culture ministry. More than 240 women are now involved in the criminal investigation.

What can women learn from this, so soon after the Pelicot trial? Nothing good about men, that’s for certain. If anything, we have only to comfort ourselves with the strength and dignity exhibited by women like Gisèle, who waived her right to anonymity and insisted on an open trial. She asked that the horrendous video footage made by her husband be made public; declared powerfully that "shame must change sides". We stand in her footsteps, now.