Gisèle Pelicot lifts her sunglasses and chooses to fight back | Global News Avenue

WARNING: This story contains descriptions of alleged sex crimes.

A few weeks into the trial, there came a moment when Gisele Pellicot decided it was time to take off her sunglasses.

This is more than just a nod to the fading autumn sunlight in the medieval southern French city of Avignon. It also showed that she had crossed a milestone – one that marked her long and painful journey from placid grandmother, to anguished and shamed rape victim, to horrific court witness, to global icon of courage and defiance. One of many milestones.

“She wore sunglasses to cover her eyes … to protect her privacy,” said Stéphane Babonneau, a young criminal lawyer who has guided Mrs. Pellicott on the case against her for two years. The case of her ex-husband Dominic and fifty other men. on trial for allegedly raping her.

“But there was a moment when she felt like she no longer needed to protect herself. She didn’t need (glasses),” Mr. Barbonneau explained, seizing on that moment to illustrate the “sincere…very” slow transformation. A humble person” she went into the trial “very worried”, shocked by the public attention and remains “very ashamed of what happened to her”.

During the trial, Giselle Pellicot, 72, said little about her treatment, making only occasional brief comments to supporters gathered at the Palais de Justice in Avignon.

But Mr. Babono, speaking now with his client’s blessing, begins to give us an insight into her dealings with the court and how she slowly and methodically seeks to rebuild her life, and to some extent her heart of peace.

Another moment — and a milestone — stands out.

That was earlier this year, in May. Mr Babonneau and his colleague Antoine Camus have been searching for some of the 20,000 grotesquely explicit videos and photos that police found on Dominique Pellicot’s computer hard drive in 2020.

This is a difficult task. Mr Babono said the videos were “absolutely disgusting”. But even more shocking was the sound.

“Mrs. Pellicott could be heard snoring … her breathing could be heard. It was even more disturbing to hear her choking as some of the men were abusing her. That sound was very important (evidence).”

Mr. Babono knew that without the videos, “most likely there would have been no trial and there would have been no case”.

Mrs. Pellicott understood this too, but for the sake of her own sanity she could have easily and understandably decided to avoid viewing any of the footage herself.

Instead, Mr. Barbonneau remembers, one day she simply declared: “I’m ready now.”

So she sat next to the two men in her office and listened to them describe carefully selected parts of each video, explaining who these men were and what she would see them do to her. Mr. Babono then pressed play, and an image of the Pelicots’ bedroom in their bungalow in the village of Mazan flashed on the screen.

Giselle remained motionless, watching intently.

“How could he?” she finally asked in a calm voice. She would repeat this over and over again over the next few days.

After a while, she jotted down the date of one of the videos.

“It was my birthday night.”

“It happened on (my) daughter’s bed. In her beach house.”

Mr Barbonneau remembered Mrs Pellicott’s continued anger, but noted that she never cried and that, with help from experts, she had managed to “pull some distance between what she saw and her mental health” Impressive distance”.

Lawyers saw the moment as a “final test”, suggesting their client had regained “some balance” in the four years since November 4, 2020, when she was told her husband’s actions, “her The world is destroyed”.

She is now ready to face a harsh public trial.

Mrs. Pellicott wanted to watch the footage to learn who the men were and to help fill in the gaps in her memory caused by years of being drugged by her husband.

“That whole part of her existence didn’t exist in her head,” Mr. Babono explained.

The same practical concerns drove her decision to opt for a public trial in the first place and pushed for the videos to be played in open court.

She must be very angry. But at that stage, she didn’t want to change the world. She was simply nervous at the thought of spending months in a closed courtroom filled with dozens of abusers. She believes a public trial would be less intimidating.

The first day of the trial remains painful. Wearing sunglasses, Mrs. Pellicott showed herself off in public for the first time. Things get worse. As Mr. Babono walked side by side with her up the steps to the courthouse, he noticed and recognized some of the defendants wearing masks.

But Mrs. Pellicott only slowly became aware that she was now surrounded by them, bumping her elbows as they pushed through the same security barrier.

“It was very stressful for her. She was surprised how casual everything seemed,” Mr. Barbonneau recalled.

Then Gisele and Dominique Pellicot looked at each other in the packed courtroom for the first time in four years. Their chairs were arranged as if such contact were inevitable.

“I sometimes see them exchanging glances,” Mr. Babono noted. Gisele expressed to her team on multiple occasions that she was worried about how she would react to the first encounter.

Of course, we now know that Dominic Pellicott admitted everything during his testimony in court and asked for forgiveness from his family. We also know that Giselle Pellicot hasn’t forgiven him yet.

“Of course, no. She can’t forgive him,” Mr. Barbonneau said.

However, the couple had once been deeply in love. They have been married for fifty years. In court, Mr. Barbonneau could tell the former couple couldn’t completely ignore their shared past. So what did the lawyer see in the glances they exchanged?

Mr. Babono said it was like they were saying “look at us”.

He felt they were conveying a shared sense of suspicion to each other. It was as if they were brief spectators, watching the suffering of two strangers.

“How did we get here?”

During the trial, defense attorneys for several defendants sought to suggest that Gisele’s composure and her lack of tears were somehow complicit in her own abuse. Or that she felt sympathy for Dominic Pellicott.

“When the victim doesn’t cry, or cries too much, there’s always something to criticize,” Mr. Babono said, a hint of contempt in his voice.

While the attacks clearly upset Mrs Pellicott, she also told her legal team not to worry.

The reason is simple. None of the accusations her lawyers brought to her in court could compare to the worst moment of her life, that day in November 2020 when an officer sat her down at the Carpentra Police Department and told her She showed off the first gruesome photo investigators had extracted. From her husband’s hard drive.

“You know I survived November 2, 2020, so I’m ready for anything now,” Barbono remembers her saying.

As the trial progressed, Giselle Pellicott was surprised to find that public and media interest had not faded away as she and her team had imagined. Instead, she started receiving letters, gifts, and applause from cheering crowds.

“When she started getting these letters, she felt some kind of responsibility to victims who were going through something similar,” Barbonneau said.

She begins to understand the uniqueness of her case – the video evidence means it’s not just “the victim’s story contrary to the suspect’s” and she now has a rare opportunity to “make a difference in society.”

“I’m lucky to have evidence. I have evidence, which is very rare. So, I have to go through (this) to represent all the victims,” ​​she told Mr Babono.

Her lawyer again noted his client’s “simple,” pragmatic character. She had no interest in becoming an “activist” but simply thought about how her own experience of being drugged without realizing it could now help other women become aware of the issue and look for possible signs of similar abuse.

If she had known then what all France knows now, perhaps she could have put an end to her suffering.

Maybe other women can do the same now.

As for the future, Mrs. Pellicott may break her silence and give some interviews in the coming months. But she made it clear that she wanted to “remain independent…she wanted to live a very simple life.”

While she may never forgive her once “perfect” ex-husband, she found a way to manage her memories of him and hold on to the “happy moments” they once shared.

Some psychiatrists believe that Dominic Pelicot was a relatively typical psychopath – a high-functioning narcissist with no capacity for empathy who was torn between a sordid secret life and a self-satisfied family man role. shuttle. Gisèle Pelicot took a simpler view, accepting the idea of ​​a split personality raised at the trial.

As Mr. Babono put it, “Dominique Pellicott had two men, and she only knew one of them.”

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