Girl on the Net

Have you heard of Gisèle Pelicot? You must have by now, surely. You must have heard of the woman who stood up publicly and showed everyone exactly where the shame lies in a rape case. Gisèle’s husband, Dominique Pelicot, drugged her repeatedly and invited strangers into their home to rape his unconscious wife over a period of almost a decade. There are 50 other men who have all been found guilty today, and more who have still not yet been identified. Despite the enormous stress of publicly naming your assailants, Gisèle Pelicot waived her anonymity in this case, to ensure that people knew not just what had been done but crucially who had done it. Gisèle Pelicot taught a world that desperately needed to hear it that ‘shame must change sides.’ So as we celebrate her breathtaking heroism, let’s also spend some time discussing Dominique Pelicot’s shame.

Ever since I first read about this case, I have talked about it in awestruck tones with other women. We say the name Gisèle Pelicot with hushed reverence and often tearful respect. Usually when I try to write about the valiant women who manage to fight back against their rapists from within a system that too often fails them, I end up flailing and struggling to find the words. Here more than at any other time, I am desperate to write this right. How can I – how can anyone – possibly write about Gisèle Pelicot in a way that does justice to her power? Most of us will fail, and I will for sure. But I want to try anyway.

Note that this piece includes detailed discussion of rape, drugging and assault. 

Dominique Pelicot’s shame

When news outlets write about this case they – understandably – focus on the rapes. The multiple, aggravated rapes that happened over the course of almost a decade. They focus on the fact that Dominique Pelicot drugged his wife and invited strangers into their home to rape her. They add in some of the sordid details about the ways he instructed them to avoid smelling of aftershave or cigarettes, wear condoms, avoid leaving marks or bruises, so that when Gisèle woke up she would be none the wiser.

When I think about this case, the thing I find myself focusing on is the visits to the doctor. Gisèle Pelicot, having been repeatedly drugged for a period of years, started suffering extreme effects from the tranquilisers that her husband had been surreptitiously adding to her food and drink. She had blackouts. Headaches. She started losing her hair. Lost control of one of her arms. She thought that perhaps she was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s. She underwent several neurological tests.

Dominique Pelicot helped her book an appointment with a specialist. He used to drive her to her appointments.

What does it take for somebody to do that? What does it take to not just remain silent but actively work to build a false reality to deceive the person you purport to love? The person with whom you have spent decades of your life, shared a home, raised children and grandchildren. What does it take to look your spouse in the eye and listen to them saying that there might be something seriously wrong with their brain… to know the answer, to be the literal cause of it, and pretend you care about helping them get better?

When this case is written up in the news, they focus on the acts. The logistics of Dominique Pelicot joining chat forums to talk to other grim little men about his plans. The way he invited them into his home. The drugs he used. The fact that he filmed it all. So much evidence! Mounting up and up and up! I can’t help but focus on what he might have been thinking and feeling as he did this. What does it take to be so confident that you will never be held accountable for your crimes that you actively store videos that document them happening? What does it take… I feel sick as I type this… to want these horrific acts filmed in the first place? To have an urge to watch those videos back, time and again?

When I hear this story, what I cannot get out of my head is what was going on in Dominique’s. The plans he had to make, ponder, revisit, adjust, execute. The conversations that had to happen with the men he recruited to do this alongside him. What does it take for someone to look a stranger in the eye and issue them with explicit instructions on how to rape your wife without leaving a trace?

Beyond this, what does it take to look your partner in the eye day in, day out? To eat dinner at the same table, making smalltalk about their day. What does it take to wake up next to the woman whose assault you have just captured on film, and look her in the eye as you tell her ‘good morning’?

What the fuck does it take to book an appointment for her at the doctor, knowing that you’ve caused a serious problem with her brain? What does it take to make that phone call, confident that the doctor won’t find out the real cause, and entirely unashamed of the fact that the cause is you?

I’m not a violent person. I try not to even make jokes about it – I find violence of any kind incredibly frightening. But the first I heard of Dominique Pelicot’s crimes was from a woman on Twitter who posted the link along with a comment that she’d be cheering Gisèle Pelicot on if she threw her husband into a woodchipper. Reading through the details of the case, I couldn’t find a reason to disagree. For the next two days after I’d read that article, I was wracked with nausea. Not just for the fact that Dominique Pelicot did this – and found not one but more than fifty other men willing to do it with him! – but the fact that he did it to the woman he purported to love. The woman who should have been able to trust him. The person with whom he had chosen to spend his life.

Gisèle Pelicot had borne his children. Listened to his woes. Washed his fucking shirts. Made breakfast for him and run errands for him and made love to him. And each night, she lay beside him in a bed where he had filmed strangers commit a series of rapes upon her unconscious body because he’d slipped drugs into her food. So many drugs, and for so long, that she thought she had a problem with her brain.

He booked her an appointment with a neurologist. Dominique Pelicot. Her husband. The man who’d arranged to have her repeatedly raped. The man who had done that so often that she’d started having blackouts.

Not a monster: a man

What Dominique Pelicot did was truly abhorrent, but we should refrain from calling him a monster. He is not a mythical creature who can’t be held to account. He’s been sitting right there in that courtroom as this grotesque story is told. We can see him. Name him. Shame him. Make him look at what he has done. Tell the fucking story.

Dominique Pelicot is not a monster, he’s a man. A disgusting one, but a man nonetheless. Not someone we can or should distance ourselves from by pretending that what he did was somehow evil beyond comprehension. It’s hard to get my head around, for sure, but not impossible: this man did these things. He has admitted that he did them. He lived for years and years, comfortable with the knowledge that he did them and would keep doing them until caught. Dominique Pelicot’s shame is there in lurid detail in dozens of papers for all the world to see, so we have no excuse for saying – the next time a man does disgusting things to a woman he purports to love – that we’re shocked or disappointed or we simply can’t believe it.

Believe it. It happened. It’s right there. We can see it.

Not only is Dominique Pelicot just a man, he’s not even a unique one… he had company! At least fifty other men in and around Mazan joined him in doing this. They accepted his invitation to rape. They followed his instructions on how to do it without leaving a trace. They went home to their own families, and got into bed with their own partners, after having violated an unconscious stranger. They looked their loved ones in the eye over breakfast the morning after. They lived with themselves for years, continuing to go about their everyday lives, comfortable with the knowledge that they had walked into the home of a man they met on the internet and raped his unconscious wife.

These men are not monsters. They are human. Thanks to Gisèle Pelicot’s heroic decision to waive her anonymity, now we even know their fucking names.

Here are all the men who have today been found guilty in this case…

Gisèle Pelicot’s power

The power of what Gisèle Pelicot has done can never be overstated. It is breathtakingly courageous – a gift to every single person who is or has ever been vulnerable to rape or sexual assault. Because no matter what dream world we all want to live in where it’s easy to report a rape, your experiences are always taken seriously, and no one ever tries to blame the victim or downplay the horror of what’s happened… it is still the case that reporting rape is astonishingly difficult. If you get up the courage to go to the police, they may well not take you seriously. Even if they investigate, as in the case of Andrew Tate, who literally recorded a voicemail telling one of his victims ‘I fucking loved how much you hated it, it turned me on’, the authorities could still decline to prosecute. Then, once your case gets to trial, you who have already been violated are now subject to judgment from the media, not to mention every single bystander with an opinion.

Gisèle had the option to remain anonymous, and avoid the scrutiny that comes with not just being a rape victim in the public eye but being the focus of one of the most shocking mass rape cases in recent memory. She chose to waive her anonymity. She turned up in court every single day and sat there while the jury watched videos of her sleeping – snoring, even – as perpetrator after perpetrator was shown raping her on camera. She faced down those men, and she made sure the world knew who they were. If you want to find out more about this, the NY Times Daily podcast did an episode on her heroism yesterday, and it’s incredibly moving.

What Gisèle Pelicot has done is not just ensure that ‘shame changes sides’, she has sent a powerful message to all the men – not monsters, but men – who would otherwise abuse women behind closed doors without fear of the consequences. You do not get to do this in the darkness. Gisèle Pelicot let us know exactly which men did these disgusting things. She showed us that they weren’t monsters, but the kind of guys who’d come and fix your boiler or put out fires or sell you bread. They are brothers, fathers, grandfathers. She had no control over what her husband or any of these grotesque men did, but by naming and shaming them in court in front of the world’s media, she made sure they did not get to do it in the darkness.

Gisèle Pelicot has done us all a powerful service: she has shown us that shame can change sides.

In exchange for that precious gift, here are some things I wish for in return. I wish – I hope – that every single day for the rest of her life, Gisèle Pelicot resides in a place of sanctuary, surrounded by love. Somewhere calm and happy, where she can spend time with her children and grandchildren, her friends, and anyone else who brings her joy. I hope she gets to tell her story again, over and over, if she wants to, or reside in silence knowing that her work is well and truly done if that’s what she wants. I hope that every single day she knows safety and love and peace. That she never again pays for a meal in a restaurant or a drink in a bar. I hope we never forget her name. May we continue to whisper it in awestruck tones for decades – to our nieces and nephews, our own children and grandchildren. May we build statues to her, write poetry about her, raise a glass to her each and every time we see a new report about a rapist who got justice. I hope that the precious gift she has given us all is repaid a thousand times over. I hope her power is never ever forgotten.

And for Dominique Pelicot… I wish the exact opposite, of course. I hope he is crushed by the weight of what he’s done. I hope he falls into bed every night shaking and weeping and drenched in the wretched disgrace of his shame. May he never know a moment’s peace from the knowledge of his actions, and how deeply the world despises him. I hope that each day when he wakes up, he makes eye contact with himself in the mirror and sees with clarity the rapist who stares back. I hope that one day he comprehends the full horror of what he has done. I hope it shatters him.

Dominique Pelicot has today been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

As I said above, I’m not violent. But still, I hope he dies there.

I hope he fucking chokes on his shame.