The outcome of Gisele Pelicot’s case

GIsele Pelicot, the 72-year-old woman at the center of the horrific rape trial that ended Thursday with the conviction of 51 men, including her husband, was rightly hailed as a hero. The trial, which took place in the southern French city of Avignon and attracted worldwide attention, was held publicly because Pelicot was willing to come forward. She agreed to be identified as the victim of a crime in which her husband drugged her and invited men to come and sexually abuse her. For this reason and because of her behavior during the trial, Pelicot has been called the face of courage and a feminist icon.

Pelicot is indeed all that and more. But her case may not be the catalyst for rape victims to come forward as people hope. Pelicot’s case was undeniable. Most sexual assault cases are not so clear-cut. It’s possible that the Pelicot case set the evidentiary threshold so high that survivors could be discouraged from coming forward.

The Pelicot trial was extraordinary in almost every way. She had been married (apparently happily) to her attacker Dominique Pelicot for decades when he began slipping huge amounts of sleeping pills into her food and drink. Her husband advertised for men to come and have sex with his wife online through an online forum called “à son insu,” which means “without her knowledge.”.” Dozens of men – many of them married – came to her home to do just that, although in some cases she was so obviously unconscious that she was snoring. She became ill and lost her hair and part of her memory. However, doctors couldn’t figure out why.

It was only after Dominique Pelicot was caught taking upskirt photos of women in a grocery store and police, who seized his computer, found videos of the sexual assaults that she realized what had been done to her over the course of a decade. When the men in the videos were brought to court, many of them protested that it was not rape because they believed they had received their husband’s consent.

Read more: Who are the co-defendants in the Pelicot trial?

That line of defense was not resolved, and on Thursday the court found 46 of the defendants guilty of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault. Dominique Pelicot, who admitted his guilt since his arrest, received the maximum sentence of 20 years, while his co-defendants received sentences of up to 15 years. Large crowds attended the trial, many of the spectators holding placards applauding Gisele Pelicot’s actions and repeating her statement during the trial that “shame must switch sides” from rape victims to perpetrators.

Research from the U.S. Department of Justice suggests that fewer than half of all sexual assaults are reported to the police. The number has increased in recent years, but shame still has a long way to go before it ends up on the side where it belongs. Certainly the MeToo movement has encouraged more survivors to speak out about their experiences. But a backlash among men who feel they are being wrongly accused of sexual assault has also established the narrative that the cards are stacked against them. The result: survivors’ testimonies continue to be doubted, and women continue to doubt whether it makes sense to come forward.

It doesn’t diminish Pelicot’s courage when she realizes that her case is ironclad and her story is unique. She was older, she had a career, she was ignorant in every way. She wasn’t a young woman at a party, a sex worker, or someone capable of consent. The evidence against the perpetrators was numerous and irrefutable. Most sexual assaults are not filmed, and when they are, most of these videos go undiscovered. (Dominique Pelicot left a folder marked “abuse” on his computer’s hard drive.) For the vast majority of women, whose sexual assaults are less well documented, coming forward might provoke skepticism or victim blame report.

Hopefully a woman shouldn’t have to be that literally to be unconscious, to be safe from the assumption that she somehow encouraged her abuser or did not resist him enough, that she sent confusing signals, that she agreed but changed her mind, or that she was in her clothes or was reckless in her behavior and is therefore somehow complicit in what happened to her. But with a swallow it’s not summer yet. Pelicot was a rare case in which there was no possibility that her behavior played a role.

After the trial, Gisele Pelicot told reporters outside the courthouse that she was thinking about her children and the other families affected by this tragedy, as well as sexual assault survivors everywhere. “I think of the unrecognized victims whose stories remain hidden,” she said in French. “I want you to know that we share the same struggle.” She thanked the people who supported her decision to make the trial public and suggested, perhaps unexpectedly, that the trial had given her some hope. “I am now confident that together we can shape a future in which everyone, women and men, can live in harmony, respect and mutual understanding.” This is again a courageous decision.