France may shrug off Gisele Pelicot’s rape ordeals as a provincial anomaly

The trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men for the rape of his now ex-wife, Gisele, has been a case without precedent.

Not just in France, but in Europe – for the scale of the crime, for the mass of sordid detail presented in open court, but above all, for the courage and dignity of Gisele. Her bold appeal that “shame must change sides” has become a rallying cry for abused women the world over.

Gisele Pelicot took the decision that the trial should be conducted entirely in public. She waived her right to anonymity. Those in the courtroom day after day noted how she was transformed from a woman hunched up and almost hiding away to a fearless advocate for her cause. Women gathered outside the court building in Avignon to support her. Her daily comings and goings were greeted with applause, culminating on the final day, when the verdicts and sentences were handed down, with song.

All of which guarantees that the name of Gisele Pelicot will occupy an honoured place in the history of women’s rights and feminism in France. The trial will also be seen as a landmark in the history of French jurisprudence, as it will surely inspire others to follow Gisele in coming forward and presenting their case in court. So far, so positive.

But could this one case, with its doughty heroine and its catalogue of almost unimaginable sadism and debauchery over so many years, have the power to change France? That has to be the question, and the answer here must be less categorical. It rather depends, too, on what is meant by changing France. Is it changing judicial attitudes by getting more rape cases into the courts and securing more convictions – in a country where the rates are even lower than they are in the UK? Or is it a much wider question about social attitudes and the treatment of women in France?

The two are, of course, linked. But let’s start on the strictly judicial front. Consider the immediate public response to the judgments. While there was widespread praise for the maximum 20-year sentence meted out to the husband for crimes that included aggravated rape, drugging his wife, and inviting others – doubtless many more than the 50 accused – to enjoy her insentient body, Dominique himself, through his lawyer, sounded a note of defiance, suggesting that he might appeal.

But another of the accused – Jean-Pierre Marechal, who was found guilty of essentially reproducing Pelicot’s drug and rape template on a smaller scale – made known that he would not appeal against his 12-year sentence, and there were those who felt that many of the sentences on the other men were on the lenient side. Some of the defence lawyers appeared to agree, saying they were advising their clients not to appeal, as the prison terms were, in many cases, a few years short of what they had feared.

As for social attitudes, there are other reasons why the Pelicot case may not have quite the resonance many French women might hope. Deepest rural France, la France profonde, holds many dark secrets, including in matters sexual, only a fraction of which, it has to be assumed, ever surface. Incest, child sexual abuse, long-standing family disputes, and convoluted cases of murder and torment are to be found periodically in the provincial media, with the more shocking becoming a national concern.

The Pelicot case is exceptional in its nature – the husband’s drugging and prostitution of his wife – and its scale, with more than 50 men brought to trial. But it took place in a small village in the southeastern corner of France, and all the men lived no more than 25km away. How widely was the secret shared? For all the acres of national and international television and press coverage, this can be regarded, by those who so choose, as a repellent rural aberration: something to be ogled at rather than something that either can be remedied.

Of course, the Pelicot case can also be regarded – as it also has been, and much more vocally – as emblematic of social attitudes in France today and the plight of its women. Gisele Pelicot is seen as personifying the depths to which French men’s treatment of women can plunge: they are objectified, subjugated – to the point here of being drugged and having their bodies farmed out to all-comers – and expected to keep quiet and carry on putting food on the table and servicing their husbands in bed.

Oh, and, as was being said after the trial ended, it really wasn’t a matter of class. Wasn’t it? The men were mostly local and engaged in humbler trades. Those who choose not to see wider ramifications for France are free to do so. The Pelicot case was not only rural and local, it was mostly confined to what some would see as the lower orders. It was nothing like a cross-section of French society. That it became a national cause to the extent it has done may itself be symptomatic of some change in France.

That said, the French elites have had their own – often very well-kept – secrets, which have from time to time seen the light of day to the detriment, even ruin, of the men concerned. In 2011, the then-head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, resigned after being accused of assaulting a New York chambermaid. More accusations accompanied his return to France, and his reputed presidential ambitions were blighted.

One of the most scandalous of a series of sex claims about public figures came with the publication in 2022 of a memoir by Camille Kouchner, who accused her stepfather, Olivier Duhamel, a leading intellectual, of abusing her twin brother as a child.

As in many countries, the #MeToo movement spawned accusations and court cases against a slew of individuals, specifically in the education and film world. The director Christophe Ruggia is currently being tried for sexual assault against the then child star, Adele Haenel, while the veteran actor, Gerard Depardieu, facing two sexual assault charges, has a trial date in March.

In light of these cases, it might also be worth asking how much of an outlier France really is in gender relations and attitudes towards women. Please stand by for some broad generalisations – to which there are bound to be exceptions. Latin countries tend to have a more conservative attitude and blur the lines more between flirting, sexual advances and sexual assault. If there is something particular about France, it might be the speed with which the backlash to #MeToo overtook the original campaign, with people of both sexes objecting that it had all gone too far.

I would only add that it is my view that French women can be as independent and liberated in every way as their Anglo-Saxon peers – and in some ways more so, thanks to generous child-care provision, and relatively liberal laws on abortion and divorce. It might also be noted that Simone de Beauvoir’s epoch-making book The Second Sex predated Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch by 21 years.

In the end, the question from the Pelicot case might be less about whether it will change France, but how much it really says about attitudes towards women in France – and how much France really needs to change. Any more than any other country, that is, including our own.