It is over. Dominique Pelicot has been found guilty of orchestrating and participating in the mass rape of his wife, Gisèle Pelicot, in their home in the quiet town of Mazan in the South of France. He has been given the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. All of the co-defendants have been found guilty of sexual assault, attempted rape or rape.
The trial is a story of what ordinary men did to one ordinary woman. The defendants represent a broad cross-section of French society. Ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s, they include a nurse, a factory worker, technicians and shopkeepers.
It is also the story of what at least 51, but almost certainly more, men did to one woman while she was drugged. And because Mr. Pelicot filmed and kept records, many of the precise details of what they did were inescapable — an extraordinary wealth of evidence. This was a case that France could not ignore.
At first it seemed that we were doomed to bear witness to a grim spectacle, a media frenzy over the appalling details of a nauseating crime that left its victim, in her own words, “a field of ruins.” But there was one more extraordinary element that soon came to light: the strength of Ms. Pelicot.
First, she refused anonymity. Then, with patient, powerful insistence that rapists be held accountable for their actions — “It’s difficult for me to hear that it’s basically banal to have raped Madame Pelicot,” she said — she opened up a conversation about sexual violence in a country where a serious reckoning was well overdue.
Convictions for rape are rare in France — 94 percent of reported cases were dropped in 2020, according to a 2024 report by France’s Public Policy Institute. The same report estimated that only 10 to 15 percent of rape complaints ended in a criminal conviction. Speaking after the verdicts were handed down, Ms. Pelicot paid tribute to those who have been denied justice: “I think of the victims, unrecognized, whose stories often remain hidden. I want you to know that we share the same struggle.”
Trials can be devastating for victims. Despite the clarity of the facts in the Pelicot case, this trial has been no exception. At one point, Ms. Pelicot was questioned over whether she had a tendency toward “exhibitionism.” Defense lawyers suggested that in one of the videos she was actually conscious and responding — a moment in which she showed a rare flash of exasperation and walked out of the courtroom. After one particularly insulting line of questioning, she told the court, “I understand why rape victims don’t press charges.”
In court, Ms. Pelicot said she’d like to ask the defendants: “When you entered that bedroom, at what point did Madame Pelicot give you her consent?” It was a question of moral rather than legal importance: The notion of consent does not exist in French rape law. The law in France as it stands requires “violence, coercion, threat or surprise” for an act to qualify as rape, but this trial has renewed the push to introduce a requirement of consent.
Ms Pelicot’s achievements would be remarkable under any circumstances, but particularly so in a country where the response to the #MeToo movement was decidedly mixed, or at least delayed.
When Sandra Muller, a French journalist, started the French version of #MeToo, #BalanceTonPorc (#ExposeYourPig), in 2017, thousands of women responded positively. But the backlash arrived swiftly: One hundred women, including the actress Catherine Deneuve, signed a public letter in Le Monde condemning the movement’s perceived excesses.
France is a country that has long prided itself on a belief in “gray areas” and resistance to so-called Anglophone puritanism. This decade, it has found itself conflicted over a reputed libertine approach to sex that has too often concealed a troubling tolerance for sexual abuse, including that of children.
On one side, a vibrant feminist movement has marched in the streets, campaigned for a comprehensive law on sexual violence and supported victims during the trial process, all while demanding an end to impunity for perpetrators. On the other, loud voices have sometimes accused the #MeToo movement of having been corrupted or having gone too far. That point of view reflects the France where someone like Roman Polanski, who fled the United States in the 1970s after admitting to the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl, could in 2020 win best director at the Césars, the French equivalent of the Oscars.
This national ambivalence was well displayed by President Emmanuel Macron, who made gender equality a “grand cause” of his presidency but last year castigated an “era of suspicion” against prominent figures and called himself an admirer of the actor Gérard Depardieu, who has been accused of sexual harassment and assault, allegations he denies, and criticized for sexist comments. “One thing you’ll never see me in is a manhunt,” Mr. Macron said on French television.
Against this backdrop, Ms. Pelicot’s very ordinariness has been her superpower. She looks and speaks like any woman one might pass on the street or see in line at the bakery. She could be a friend, a colleague, a neighbor. She cannot be accused of trying to use this trial to bring down powerful men, since the defendants in the Pelicot trial have repeatedly been described as “Mr. Every Man.” In a trial with dozens of perpetrators and one drugged victim, it is abundantly clear who has been hunted, and it is not the men.
Amid persistent political chaos in France, we no longer know how long governments will last in France, never mind whether or when they will be able to revise the laws on rape. Feminist groups agree that what will truly work to bring down rates of violence against women and girls is serious funding for prevention and care for victims, but for now, that seems unlikely.
