Mass rape victim Gisele Pelicot condemns the cowardice of accused abusers

By Marc Leras

AVIGNON, France (Reuters) -Gisele Pelicot, the victim of mass rapes organized by her husband for a decade, condemned on Tuesday the cowardice of the dozens of men accused of abusing her and who claim they did not realize that it was rape. The patriarchal society must change.

Dominique Pelicot, her husband, has admitted to drugging his wife, 71, and inviting strangers to their home to rape her while she was unconscious, in a trial that has attracted worldwide attention and become an investigation into the ubiquity of sexual violence.

Most of the 50 other men on trial have said they did not realize they were raping her, did not intend to rape her or placed all the blame on her husband, who they said manipulated them.

“For me, this is the test of cowardice, there is no other way to describe it,” said Gisele Pelicot, adding that there was no excuse for abusing her while she was unconscious.

Video footage recorded by her husband and shown in court in recent weeks repeatedly shows her motionless and sometimes snoring as the defendants, including her husband, abused her.

“If you walk into a bedroom and see a motionless body, at what point (do you decide) not to respond,” she said in an address to the suspects, many of whom were in the courtroom. “Why didn’t you leave immediately and report it to the police?”

Gisele Pelicot only learned of the abuse four years ago when police came across videos and photos her husband had recorded of the abuse he orchestrated and also carried out.

‘RAPE IS RAPE’

Gisele Pelicot told the court she was angry with the suspect, not least because any of them could have ended her ordeal at any time if they had charged her husband.

“They must take responsibility for their actions. They raped. Rape is rape,” she added.

It is the third time she has addressed the court in Avignon, southern France, as the trial moves towards delivering verdicts around December 20.

Under French law, she could have asked for the trial to take place behind closed doors. Instead, she asked for the meeting to take place in public. She said she hoped it would help other women speak out and show that victims have nothing to be ashamed of.

“It is time for society to look at this macho, patriarchal society and change the way it views rape,” she told the court. She said she would never forgive her husband.

On Monday, the Pelicots’ two sons asked the court to punish him severely. They also said that they would never forgive him and that he was dead to them. Their sister, Caroline Darian, said she believed Dominique Pelicot also drugged and abused her.

When it was Dominique Pelicot’s turn to speak on Tuesday, he reiterated that he had not abused Caroline Darian or his grandchildren. At that moment, his daughter interrupted him from the courtroom and shouted that he was a liar.

“You don’t even have the courage to tell the truth!” she shouted. ‘You will die in a lie. You are alone in your lie.”

Earlier in the trial, Dominique Pelicot admitted that he raped his wife while she was unconscious and invited others to rape her. He told the court: “I am a rapist, just like everyone else in this room.”

(Additional reporting by Manuel Ausloos, Antony Paone in Avignon and Juliette Jabkhiro in Paris; writing by Ingrid Melander; editing by Alison Williams, Alexandra Hudson, William Maclean)