Thousands of people take to the streets in France to support Gisèle Pelicot and all rape victims

September 15 () –

Thousands of people demonstrated in cities across France on Saturday to express their support for rape victims and in particular for Gisèle Pelicot, ten days into the trial of her husband for drugging her and allowing 50 other men to rape her while he recorded videos over a decade.

The largest demonstration took place in Paris’s Place de la République, where people chanted slogans such as “We are all Gisèle”, “We see you as a rapist, we believe you as a victim” and “You are not alone”.

Other major cities such as Marseille, Lyon and Rennes have also been the scene of protests. According to the Fondation des Femmes (Women’s Foundation), one of the movements that organised the demonstrations, meetings have been organised in more than thirty towns across the country, including Avignon, where the trial of Dominique Pelicot and the 50 men accused of raping Gisèle is taking place.

Together with other feminist associations and the ‘Me Too’ movement, the group has called for mobilisation “starting from the ordeal of Gisèle Pelicot, but not limited to it”.

In an article published Thursday in the daily ‘Libération’, the group said that “we were wrong to call this trial the ‘Mazan case’ or even the ‘Pelicot case’. It is above all the ‘case of the 72 rapists’, because “unfortunately, each woman will be able to find a face that brings back a traumatic memory among the multitude of men accused in Mazan.”

She calls on men to “stand up with us, to stop being passive at best, and complicit at worst.” “Not all men,” we hear over and over again after every femicide and rape, but when will we see concrete actions to change things beyond these words that sweep the facts under the carpet?” she asks.

The association is also calling for a comprehensive law against sexual violence to put an end to the “delirious” rate of dismissal of rape complaints in France, which, it says, reached 94 percent in 2020.

The case of Gisèle Pelicot has shocked French society, after it became known that she was the victim of at least 92 rapes organised by her own husband over a decade. Dominique Pelicot allegedly gave his wife tranquillisers without her consent in order to keep her unconscious during the attacks, which involved at least 50 other men aged between 26 and 74, recruited by Pélicot via the Internet.