Shock in French court as public shown videos of men accused of raping drugged woman

AVIGNON, France – A leaden silence descended upon the courtroom as the videos began to play over three screens.

There was Ms Gisele Pelicot, the victim at the centre of a rape trial that has rocked France, lying on a bed on her side, her arms limp before her, her mouth open. The sound of her snoring filled the courtroom. She appeared to be dead asleep.

In the videos, she did not respond to the touches of the men, who engaged with her body in sex acts. Ms Pelicot fought hard for these videos to be shown publicly in the courtroom because, she said, they were incontrovertible evidence.

While most rape victims have only their word and memory of events, Ms Pelicot has a library of proof in the form of videos and photographs – taken by her husband.

Showing them publicly was essential, her lawyer Antoine Camus told the courtroom, “to look rape straight in the eyes”.

It was another astounding moment in a trial that for the past month has gripped France by the throat and shaken it violently. The case has raised profound questions about relations between men and women, the prevalence of rape and conceptions of consent.

More than 50 men are on trial together. Almost all are accused of aggravated rape against Ms Pelicot, a grandmother and retired manager in a big company, while she was in an unconscious state.

Her former husband of 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, has pleaded guilty to mixing drugs into her food and drink and inviting others into their home, in a village in southern France where they had retired, to join him in raping her limp body.

While Ms Pelicot, 71, had the right to request that the trial take place behind closed doors, she decided to make it public. She said that she did it not for her but to protect other women.

Shame, she said, must change sides – from the victims to the perpetrators.

The accused men appear to be a gallery of working-class and middle-class French society: truck drivers, carpenters and trade workers, a nurse, an information technology expert, and a local journalist.

They range in age from 26 to 74. Many have children and are in relationships. Over four months, their cases are coming before the court in batches of six or seven a week.

All but 15 have contested the charge. Many have argued that they were tricked into going into her bedroom by Dominique Pelicot, 71, who had offered them a playful trio with his wife.

Many say he led them to believe that she was sleeping – or pretending to sleep – as part of the couple’s sexual fantasy. Dominique Pelicot manipulated them when they were vulnerable, some of them have said, and directed them in the acts like a stage manager. They said they had blindly followed his orders.

One said this week that he thought he was also drugged and had no memory from the moment he entered the room until he returned to his car later.

Another said he was so terrified by Dominique Pelicot, whom he regarded as a “predator” and a “psychopath”, that he interacted with Ms Pelicot’s body calmly to “not show weakness”.

“They took a precise line of defence,” Mr Camus, one of the lawyers for Ms Pelicot, told the court on Oct 4. Ms Pelicot has said that while the men were perhaps tricked into going into her bedroom, once they got there, she was so unconscious that it was clear she could not have possibly given consent.

This is where the videos come in.

Dominique Pelicot filmed most of the encounters, often with two cameras, and carefully edited and titled them. Over the course of their investigation, police found more than 20,000 videos and photographs on his electronic devices, many of them in a digital folder titled “Abuse”.

After initially ruling the videos would not be viewed because of their “indecent and shocking” nature, the judges of the criminal court in Avignon changed their minds after a heated courtroom debate on Oct 4.

Not all the videos would be shown, announced Judge Roger Arata – just those deemed “strictly necessary” for the “manifestation of the truth”.

A dozen videos and about 10 photos were shown over the courtroom’s three flat screens on Oct 4 afternoon and projected into the overflow room for members of the public, who have continued to line up every day to watch the proceedings and support Ms Pelicot.

The videos’ titles alone, packed with crude words and read out by the prosecutor, made many observers flinch. Judge Arata said at one point that he did not have any “particular desire” to read them out loud any more.

In many, Ms Pelicot appeared naked, but in some, she wore a garter belt, underwear and white socks. In one, she had a blindfold over her eyes. Her husband told police he often dressed her up after she was unconscious, and then at the end of the night, he cleaned her and returned her to her nightclothes.

The accused were seen stroking her sides and intimate parts, and the camera sometimes zoomed in for close-ups. While Ms Pelicot could be seen moving slightly in some, in none was she seen responding to the touches. She often snored loudly.

The videos played on uncomfortably long. One defendant lowered his face. Many lawyers and journalists stopped looking at the screens.

After two hours of viewing the videos, the court session ended abruptly. People drifted out of the courtroom and the overflow room stunned.

“We are in shock,” said Ms Anne-Marie Galvan, 58, a nursing assistant at the local hospital. Her husband, Mr Serge Galvan, stood nearby, tears swelling in his eyes.

“I’m almost ashamed to be a man,” he said. “You could see she was sleeping. It was obvious she was unconscious.” NYTIMES