group-telegram.com/MnemosInLimbo/5474
Last Update:
France's mass rape trial sparks timid debate about systemic male violence | France 24
Dominique Pelicot and about 50 men have been accused of rape on Gisèle Pelicot over a decade, using sedatives.
"During court hearings, Dominique Pelicot, 71, has admitted to administering sedatives to his wife to rape her while unconscious and inviting strangers into their home to join in the abuse from 2011 to 2020.
[...]
His then wife, 71-year-old Gisèle Pelicot, has become an overnight feminist icon by refusing to be ashamed and demanding the trial be open to the public to raise awareness about the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.
Thousands of people, including some men, took to the streets in mid-September to support her and demand an end to "rape culture".
[...]
"The Pelicot case has proved that male violence is not about monsters but men – everyday men," [therapist and activist Morgan N. Lucas] wrote.
[...]
The co-defendants on trial in Avignon until December are aged 26 to 74.
Apart from Pelicot, they include 49 men accused of raping or attempting to rape his wife, and another who has admitted to sedating his own spouse so that he and Pelicot could sexually assault her.
[...]
Ivan Jablonka, a social historian who has written about masculinity, said the trial was historic, including because of the sheer number of defendants.
"It's a reminder, if one were necessary, that rapes are committed by our neighbours, our colleagues, our relatives in our homes," he said.
[...]
"There is growing awareness but I think it is limited to a very small minority" of men, he said.
"In the street, in discussions, on social media – everywhere really – I still see a lot of indifference, contempt and silence. Complicit silence.
"Overall men are not interested."
He said there were still a "massive" number of gender-based crimes and much work remained to be done."
>>> Article link <<<
• In other articles :
"Last year, French authorities registered 114,000 victims of sexual violence, including more than 25,000 reported rapes. But experts say most rapes go unreported due to a lack of tangible evidence: About 80% of women don’t press charges, and 80% of the ones who do see their case dropped before it is investigated.
[...]
After a store security guard caught Pelicot shooting video up unsuspecting women’s skirts in 2020, police searched his home and found thousands of pornographic photos and videos on his phone, laptop and USB stick. Dominique Pelicot later said he had recorded and stored the sexual encounters of each of his guests and neatly organized them in separate files.
[...]
Experts and groups working to combat sexual violence say the defendants’ unwillingness or inability to admit to rape speaks loudly to taboos and stereotypes that persist in French society.
For Magali Lafourcade, a judge and general secretary of the National Consultative Commission of Human Rights who isn’t involved in the trial, popular culture has given people the wrong idea about what rapists look like and how they operate.
“It’s the idea of a hooded man with a knife whom you don’t know and is waiting for you in a place that is not a private place,” she said, noting that this “is miles away from the sociological, criminological reality of rape.”
Two-thirds of rapes take place at private homes, and in a vast majority of cases, victims know their rapists, Lafourcade said.
the Pelicot case “makes us understand that in fact rapists could be everyone.”
“For once, they’re not monsters — they’re not serial killers on the margin of society. They are men who resemble those we love,” she said. “In this sense, there is something revolutionary.”"
>>> NPR article link <<<
Dominique Pélicot has also been accused by his children of sexual abuse on his daughter and on one of his grandchildren.
>>> France 24 article link <<<
BY Mnémosyne's Echo Chamber
Share with your friend now:
group-telegram.com/MnemosInLimbo/5474