Verdicts due in rape trial that shook France – DW – 12/19/2024

In Paris, a new helpline has been launched to address the growing concerns over drug-facilitated sexual assault.

The Reference Centre on Drug-Facilitated Sexual Assault, or CRAFS, its acronym in French, coincided with the Pelicot rape trial.

This trial has increased awareness regarding the role of drugs in sexual abuse cases.

Since its inception, CRAFS has received numerous calls from both victims and healthcare professionals seeking guidance on recognizing and responding to drug-related abuse, said Leila Chaouachi, a doctor who founded the service.

What are the warning signs? They feel they don’t have enough training,” she said.

The helpline offers essential information on symptoms like drowsiness, nausea, and amnesia and provides guidance on the next steps, including the use of drug detection kits.

• 1973 The Pelicots marry
• 2011 to 2020 Dominique Pelicot and men he recruited online rapes Gisele Pelicot multiple times
• September 2020 Pelicot is arrested after a security guard catches him filming up the skirts of women.
• November 2020 Investigators tell Gisele Pelicot about the videos they have found on her husband’s electronics
• Early September 2024: The trial begins in Avignon, France.
• September 2024: Dominique Pelicot, Gisele’s ex-husband, confesses to the crime of drugging and raping Gisele over a nine-year period.
• September 2024: Gisele Pelicot gives her first testimony, describing the abuse and calling for societal change.
• November 2024: Gisele Pelicot delivers her final statement, condemning the “cowardice” of the accused and calling for a change in society’s attitude towards rape.
• November 2024: The trial continues with final arguments from prosecutors and defense teams.
• December 19, 2024: The verdict is expected to be delivered.

Gisele Pelicot has become a feminist icon for speaking out and rejecting the idea that rape victims should be ashamed. The trial has sparked widespread debate and protests about sexual violence in French society.

Gisele Pelicot, 72, met her husband as a teenager and they married in 1973. They divorced briefly in the early 2000s for financial reasons, but remained living together and remarried after a few years.

Investigators have presented evidence that he took advantage of anti-anxiety and sleeping pills that he and his wife were prescribed to start drugging her and raping her himself, while they were still living in Paris before retirement.

In 2011, the couple retired to the village of Mazan in southeastern France. Pelicot began actively recruiting other men online to come to his home and rape his wife. His footage of the crimes was found when police arrested him for an upskirting incident in 2020.

During the abuse, the affects of the repeated drugging prompted Gisele to assume she had a serious health issue, as she was constantly tired and her hair was falling out. Her husband accompanied her to numerous doctors appointments as she sought answers to the mysterious illness.

Pelicot’s co-defendants come from all variations of middle- and working-class backgrounds, and many of them have wives and partners. They include truck drivers, an IT specialist, and a journalist. One of them is accused not of assaulting Gisele Pelicot, but of having followed Dominique Pelicot’s advice for raping his own wife, whom Pelicot also assaulted. A 52nd defendant died of cancer before the trial’s completion.

Pelicot has confessed to the crimes. Many of his co-defendants have argued that they were under the impression that they were indulging in the couple’s sexual fantasy or that they did not know she was unconscious. The accused face up to 20 years in prison.

DW does not usually publish the names of victims but is doing so in this instance at Gisele Pelicot’s request to raise awareness about sexual abuse.

Our decision to publish disturbing content from the Pelicot rape trial comes after extensive deliberation by the journalists and editors in our newsroom. It follows Pelicot’s lead.

She decided to keep the trial open to the public despite the court’s suggestion to hold it in private. She allowed journalists to use her full name and permitted the court to display explicit videos recorded by her husband.

“I wanted all women victims of rape – not just when they have been drugged, rape exists at all levels, I want those women to say: Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can do it too,” she testified to the court.

“When you’re raped, there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them,” she said about the accused.

es/lo (AFP, AP, dpa, Reuters)