All those wives and girlfriends in denial even though the rape is documented with photos and video. Kudos to Gisèle for making the trial public.
As advanced as France may seem, misogyny is still extremely common over there... French women that move to Quebec usually don't believe how much more equal they are and feel compared to their situation back home.
She is so badass. That last line gives me chills.
Gisèle Pelicot’s voice broke as she addressed some of the witnesses who stayed in the room.
“I wanted to remind these women — wives, sisters, mothers — who say their husbands are good men who wouldn’t do this,” she said. “I had the same.”
"Multiple women have said that the men they know might have done a “bêtise” but didn’t commit rape. In French, a “bêtise” roughly translates to “something stupid.” It’s a word that parents use to scold children for doing silly things, or that a couple might invoke while bickering."
Does the spectrum for that word usually range from lighting the wrong side of a cigarette to serious crimes against human dignity?
No, a bêtise is when a kid spills her milk or breaks a toy.
In this context I think they use the word as an euphemism for cheating on your spouse, as that's the defense of most of the accused: they thought it was a kink and that Gisèle Pelicot had given her consent.
For anyone else lucky enough to have never heard of this:
In September 2024, Dominique Pélicot, a 71-year-old man from Mazan in south-eastern France, testified in court that he repeatedly drugged his wife, raped her, and invited strangers to rape her while she was unconscious.[1] Over a period of nine years, from July 2011 to October 2020, Gisèle Pélicot, who was unaware of the abuse being perpetrated against her, was raped 92 times by 72 men, as her husband filmed the abuse. The abuse came to light only in September 2020 when Dominique Pélicot was arrested for taking upskirt photographs of women in a supermarket, and police thereafter discovered thousands of images and videos that Pélicot had taken of the rapes and stored on his computing equipment. Pélicot is also accused of training Jean-Pierre Maréchal to drug and rape his own wife. The trial in Avignon of Dominique Pélicot and 50 other men accused of the rapes began on 2 September 2024, and is scheduled to conclude in mid-December.
Jfc. Wth.
The massive BALLS on this woman. There are whole societies whose faces I'd love to scream this line in.
“It’s true that I hear lots of women, and men, who say ‘you’re very brave,’” she said. “I say it’s not bravery, it’s will and determination to change society.”
She shouldn't have to shoulder this in the first place but she's doing so heroically.
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