‘Monster of Avignon’ Rape Scandal: Is It France’s #MeToo Moment?
Women's rights activist Blandine Deverlanges wants to be in court to support Gisèle Pélicot as much as she can, but often the testimony in the rape trial implicating dozens of men is too much.
"Sometimes it is really unbearable, so I cannot go every day," said Deverlanges, founder of Les Amazones d'Avignon, a group whose members have protested outside Vaucluse criminal court since the case against Pélicot's husband Dominique and 50 other men started on September 2.
"I felt sick," Deverlanges told Newsweek in describing the first time she heard details of how the retired electrician allegedly drugged his wife and recruited accomplices in an online chatroom to sexually violate her while it was being filmed.
"During the hearing I cry and the women around me, you see tears on their faces-it is so inhuman. This woman has been a victim of such monstrosity that we feel compassion and anger and everything is mixed," she said. "You feel so disgusted."
Gisèle Pélicot, 72, has won praise for waiving her anonymity and walking defiantly into the Avignon courtroom every day, sometimes behind the men accused of raping her.
On September 17, she heard her husband of five decades admit: "I am a rapist like the others in this room."
The range of professions and ages of the accused reflects a snapshot of different generations and a cross-section of working and middle-class rural France. The youngest is 26, the oldest 74, and they include truck drivers, members of the military, a nurse and a journalist. The modus operandi of the accused combined with the everyday nature of their occupations have tested public comprehension.
Gisèle Pélicot's courtroom response of "it is difficult for me to listen to this" was understated and echoed sentiment in France where the #MeToo movement has so far only implicated the famous and powerful, with few consequences.
"This case shows that the aggressor could be my brother, my father, my friend," said Hélène Devynck, a journalist and key figure of the #MeToo movement in France. "It highlights the culture of rape," she told Newsweek.
"Feminists have been explaining for years that there is no profile of an aggressor and that's what this shows," said Devynck, whose 2022 book Impunity detailed accusations of sexual assault and harassment by many women against renowned TV journalist Patrick Poivre d'Arvor, known widely as PPDA. He denied any wrongdoing.
In an op-ed for newspaper Le Monde, Devynck listed other high-profile cases of sexual assault in France involving celebrities. Devynck's article, written in the second person, directly addressed Gisèle Pélicot, and lauded her stoicism for holding her head high and sharing a courtroom with the men on trial.
"That has had a totally overwhelming effect because by looking them in the eye, by forcing them to see her, they force us, the whole of society, to hear her, to listen to her," said Devynck.
"In France there is an even greater resistance than in the Anglo-Saxon world to condemning these men," she said. "When they are celebrities, they continue to work." But this case is different. "They really are just middle-class people.
"That removes this exceptional side that we would like to put on the rapist who would be either at the top or at the bottom of society."
The case spurred thousands of people to take to the streets in 35 demonstrations across the country, including in Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille and other cities, in the hope that it would prompt other victims to come forward.
The case only came to light after Dominique Pélicot was arrested in 2020 accused of filming up women's skirts in a supermarket. A raid on their house in the Provence town of Mazan yielded thousands of images and videos on a computer showing the alleged abuse of his wife.
Out of the 50 men, many are charged with raping Gisèle Pélicot once, others as much as six times. Thirty-five said they did not consider their actions to be rape, Le Figaro reported, with many telling police they thought she was pretending to be asleep and was a willing participant.
Others said it was enough that the husband had consented, and only 14 regretted what they did.
"I think this defense strategy highlights the rape culture that is in France," said Anne-Cécile Mailfert, founding president of the Fondation des Femmes, which champions women's rights and awareness about sexual assault. "It is a defense strategy, they are scared, so of course everything they're saying is because they want to avoid jail."
"But there is still this idea that men [who] are husband possess their wife's body and they are the owner of their sexuality," she told Newsweek.
Her organization is pushing for a change to French legislation on sexual offenses and is working with the nongovernmental organization of Gisèle Pélicot's daughter, Caroline Darian, called M'endors Pas: Stop à la Soumission Chimique (Don't Put Me To Sleep: Stop Chemical Submission). Darian, 46, who had been secretly photographed in the nude by her father, gave evidence against him in court.
Mailfert said that since 2017, there has been a new #MeToo case in France every two or three months involving celebrities, which shows how an imbalance of power can lead to sexual violence. But the cases were difficult for ordinary women to relate to and did not lead to any big legal change.
She said that while the #MeToo movement raised awareness about sexual violence and caused a doubling in rape complaints, only six percent of them were pursued by investigators and there are fewer rape convictions in France today than in 2007.
"All the men were in a kind of fraternity together, each of them could have stopped and none of them did," said Deverlanges. "The motto of France is liberty, equality and fraternity and now when I hear the word fraternity, I want to vomit. It's not solidarity with women, it's between men against women."
She said the trial, which is due to finish in December, should force a reflection in French society on issues brought up by it, such as chemical submission and, given the filmed nature of the alleged crimes, the link between pornography and sexual violence.
"#MeToo has allowed women to express themselves, but it has also given the opportunity for men to say 'not all men' and in essence, very little has changed," Deverlanges said.
"We have seen a movement of recovery in which people who claim to be feminists give speeches that express the opposite," she said regarding the Pélicot case, in which also "there are anti-feminists who are going to try to push their agenda."
However, there is concern whether it can effect change, especially if there is complacency among France's political class. In comments that sparked fury, Mayor of Mazan Louis Bonnet recently said that the Pélicot case could have been "far more serious," adding that "no women were killed."
"We hope that this time, the emotion in French society is so high that it can lead to a political response," Mailfert said. "We have to change but we need that conversation we haven't had so far."
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This story was originally published October 3, 2024 at 5:00 AM