Gisèle Pelicot 'determined to change society' as she tells court shame for rape falls on defendant – live | France

If you're just joining us, here's a recap of what we heard from Gisèle Pelicot today:

On what she thinks the trial should mean for other rape victims: “Mrs Pelicot did it, we can do it too. When you get raped you feel ashamed, and it’s not our job to be ashamed – it’s for them.”

Among the evidence she had heard: “I am a completely destroyed woman and I don’t know how to recover from this.”

How she moves forward in light of what she heard in court: “It is true that I hear many women and men saying that you are very brave. I say it is not about bravery, but about the will and determination to change society.”

On the question of whether she felt responsible for what happened: “Of course I don’t feel responsible for anything today. Today I am above all a victim.”

She turned to her husband, whom she did not want to look at, and asked: “How could you betray me so far? How could you bring these strangers into my bedroom?”

When I heard wives, girlfriends or boyfriends in court saying that the defendant didn't seem capable of rape: “We need to make progress on rape culture in society.” People should learn the definition of rape, she adds. “For me they are rapists, they remain rapists. Rape is rape.”

The morning hearing at the criminal court in Avignon has now ended.

Gisèle Pelicot is expected to speak again later in the trial, which is scheduled to run until December 20.

Angelique Chrisafis

A defense attorney questions whether Dominique Pelicot was stopped in 2020 for filming women's skirts in a supermarket.

Gisèle Pelicot says she believed at the time it was the first time he had been stopped for this behavior and felt at the time that she could forgive him if he apologized to the women he had attacked .

But during the police investigation, she learned that he had already been stopped for the same crime ten years earlier, in 2010, in a supermarket in the Paris area.

She says she wasn't informed about it in 2010, and if she had been, she might have left him – rather than endure a decade of rape between then and 2020.

“I lost ten years of my life,” says Gisèle Pelicot. “If I had been warned in 2010, I would have been much more alert to my mental errors.”

Angelique Chrisafis

A defense attorney asks whether Gisèle Pelicot was aware of the memoirs that Dominique Pelicot wrote in 2011.

She replies: “His daughter had asked him to write about his childhood; She knew he had had a difficult childhood. She said, 'You should write a memoir.'”

Gisèle Pelicot says she took the manuscript with her on vacation to read. When she found out while reading that Dominique Pelicot was raped as a child, she says, “It hit me. I didn't understand before that he had been raped…”

Angelique Chrisafis

Gisèle Pelicot is asked by a defense attorney about her daughter Caroline and tells investigators: “One night I saw my father grab my mother by the neck, lift her up from the ground and say he was going to kill her.”

The lawyer asks if this is related to the moment when Dominique Pelicot found out that she was having an extramarital affair.

Gisèle Pelicot says this is the case, adding: “She was a little girl of eight years old, she's not lying, but she saw a scene in the bathroom when her father came up to me. He shook me by the collar, that’s true.”

She says:

I lived with him for 50 years… I wouldn't have stayed for 50 years if he had behaved like a violent animal. Like all couples, we had arguments. We have overcome many challenges: illness, work, money. He was no brute. He never hit me… This case is completely incomprehensible to me. I never thought a man could do something like that.

Angelique Chrisafis

When asked about a possible inferiority complex in Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle Pelicot answers:

When I met Dominique, despite losing my mother at a very young age, I had always been surrounded by love, [from] my grandmother, my aunt. I had always been in that atmosphere. Dominique was the opposite, he had a tyrannical father, he gave his entire salary to his parents. The difference was that he had a lot of anger and blame…

She says when he met her, he came into a family – her family – where there was a lot of love and gentleness. That's the difference between them, she says. She says her family has always supported him, and so has she: “I've always tried to find a balance where we're comfortable.”

She says she tried to compensate for her former husband's difficult childhood. When she met Dominique Pelicot, she says, his mother cried because she had no money because her tyrannical husband wouldn't give her any.

Gisèle Pelicot says of Dominique Pelicot's mother: “I saw how this woman, whom I liked very much, was not happy with her husband, who was tyrannical and authoritarian. We couldn't talk about anything. At the table he had to be served like a prince.”

She questions the testimony of Dominique Pelicot's brother, who told the court it was a happy family.

Gisèle Pelicot: “I continue… through the determination to change society”

Angelique Chrisafis

When asked how she continued in light of what she heard in court, Gisèle Pelicot replies:

It is true that I hear many women and men saying that you are very brave. I say it's not about bravery, but about the will and determination to change society.

Angelique Chrisafis

When asked by her lawyer whether she should ask herself whether she was responsible for what happened, Gisèle Pelicot replied: “Of course I don’t feel responsible for anything today. Today I am above all a victim.”

After hearing wives, girlfriends or boyfriends in court say the defendant didn't seem capable of rape, she says, “We need to make progress on rape culture in society.” People should learn the definition of rape, she adds.

Asked about some of the accused men who said they had gently caressed her during the alleged assaults and therefore it was not rape, Gisèle Pelicot said the men had defiled “an unconscious woman.”

She says: “For me they are rapists, they remain rapists. Rape is rape.”

Angelique Chrisafis

When asked if her husband referred to her as “la bourgeoise” to some of the men he allegedly hired to rape her, she says:

It's interesting. I've always liked going out well dressed, I've always done that in my life, at work, even today. When I go to the market I am always well dressed. So if my way of dressing and being was bourgeois… I've always been interested in literature and music.

She says Dominique Pelicot didn't like going to the opera with her, maybe that was why. “But I think culture is accessible to everyone today.”

The court president asks: “You are the daughter of an army officer, with classical training?”

Gisèle Pelicot answers: “Yes, with values.”

The President asks whether that might have been a problem for Dominique Pelicot.

She replies: “I never felt an inferiority complex from him.”

Angelique Chrisafis

When a judge asked how Dominique Pelicot found out about her extramarital relationship, she said she told him about it.

“I was in the bathroom,” says Gisèle. “He had doubts. He saw that I wasn't the same person. He said, “I need to know,” and I admitted it. It was very difficult for him. He couldn’t imagine for a moment that I could do that.”

Angelique Chrisafis

Gisèle Pelicot is being questioned about a video shown to the court with her husband in which she can clearly be heard saying “Stop, stop, it hurts” and speaking in a voice that is not “normal” – perhaps in the early stages Sedation.

The court president asks: “Do you think it was consensual?” She answers: “It was rape, of course it was rape.”