‘How many more Gisèles are out there?’: Pelicot trial jolts fight against sexual violence | Gisèle Pelicot rape trial

It was during a workshop on macramé near Barcelona, between bouts of tugging on ropes and tying knots, that the conversation turned to the mass rape trial taking place in neighbouring France. After one woman at the table said she was considering travelling to Avignon for a rally in support of Gisèle Pelicot, another stood up, introduced herself and said she would like to come along.

Six days later, six women from the workshop made the six-hour trip to Avignon together in a rented car. They were intent on joining the many expressing their horror after Dominique Pelicot, one of the worst sex offenders in modern French history, was accused of drugging his then wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her over the course of a decade.

“What drove us to go was anger but also this feeling in the pit of our stomachs,” said Clàudia Tresserras, one of those on the October trip. “It’s that feeling that we couldn’t just stay quiet and stay at home, that we had to do something.”

It’s a hint of how the Pelicot trial – and Gisèle’s extraordinary decision to waive her anonymity and push for all the details of the case to be made public – has jolted France and sent shock waves around the world.

On Friday, a day after Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Tresserras was set to return to Avignon, this time with 200 women from across Spain, including members of Tresserras’s local feminist collective, Radfem Alt Maresme, to rally in support of Gisèle Pelicot. “We’ve managed to fill an enormous bus and many others are going by car,” Tresserras said. “It’s an incredible army.”

References to Gisèle Pelicot and her now famous line – “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them,” she told the court in October – have turned up at rallies from Brittany to Brussels and Barcelona and have been echoed thousands of times on social media. As Gisèle Pelicot made her way each day into the courtroom, her path was lined with cheering supporters eager to shower her with applause and cries of “Merci, Gisèle!”, while letters addressed to her poured into the local post office from around the globe.

Megan Clement, a Paris-based journalist who has covered feminism as the editor of the Impact newsletter, said the case had stirred up emotions across France and far beyond the country’s borders. “Every woman I speak to has very strong feelings about this trial,” she said. “It’s astonishing because Gisèle has turned this horrific, horrific incident into something vaguely hopeful and inspiring.”

From Germany to Great Britain, magazine covers have paid tribute to Gisèle Pelicot, and there were calls for her to be named Time magazine’s person of the year. For the trial, 165 media outlets including 76 foreign outlets reportedly sought accreditation, and hundreds more followed proceedings virtually on Thursday as the court returned guilty verdicts for all of the men accused.

Clement said Gisèle Pelicot had single-handedly transformed the global conversation around sexual violence, shattering through the shame carried by many survivors. “It’s advancing a new feminist discourse,” she said. “To have a spokesperson for these feminist ideals when it comes to sexual violence – particularly in this global moment where we’re seeing this anti-feminist backlash – is very powerful.”

Sarah McGrath, who heads Women for Women France, an NGO that manages a multilingual online resource centre for victims of domestic abuse in France, said that while there was no doubt Gisèle Pelicot was a “national treasure”, it remained to be seen whether the trial would have a lasting impact.

At the core of McGrath’s concerns was how men in France had reacted to the trial. “We have got a big problem with men,” she said. “We are still seeing defensiveness, we are still seeing the catch cry ‘not all men’.”

While Gisèle Pelicot’s husband admitted the charges against him, telling the court he was a rapist, only 14 other men on trial admitted rape. Instead, most of the accused, whose ages range from 26 to 74, said they had done it by accident, involuntarily, unintentionally or because Gisèle Pelicot’s husband had said it was fine.

It was a sharp contrast to the findings of the court: every single man was found guilty of at least one charge – 47 of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault.

Outside the courtroom, what was conspicuously absent was any kind of “reckoning with masculinity”, McGrath said. “Lots of men are very quick to say ‘I would never, I don’t understand how this is possible,’” she said. “They don’t seem to be taking responsibility and leadership on eliminating male violence against women. Which is ridiculous because only men can eliminate male violence against women.”

From the trial’s beginning in September, those tracking it included a group of women 11,000 miles away. For years, Australia’s Older Women’s Network had worked to highlight sexual assault against older women; now they watched in awe as Gisèle Pelicot assured survivors they were not alone.

Determined to show solidarity with Gisèle Pelicot, the group sprang into action, collecting donations among themselves to send her a silk scarf featuring a First Nations design. They were overjoyed last month when she emerged from the courtroom wearing the scarf and told reporters she had been honoured by their gesture. “It just meant the world to us,” said Yumi Lee, of the network. “We were so moved.”

It was a high point in an otherwise “extremely depressing” trial, said Lee, one that had reinforced the many ways in violence against women continued to be normalised, with women often commodified and seen as objects. “And unfortunately for Gisèle Pelicot she has endured a nightmare,” she said. “But how many more Gisèles are out there? The number would probably horrify us even more.”

In France and around the world, it is believed, the vast majority of rapes are never reported to police, a grim reality the reasons for which were laid bare in Avignon as defence lawyers grilled Gisèle Pelicot over everything from her sex life to her drinking habits and her reaction to the trial.

Even so, Lee said Gisèle Pelicot had managed to pry open a space for society to address violence against women and the failings of the justice system when it came to meaningfully tackling the issue.

Now it was up to society to keep that momentum going, Lee said. “Remember the #MeToo movement? It was so powerful. And then it just disappeared. It’s like the caravan that passes and the dogs bark and then it dies away until the next caravan comes along. So we have to keep the caravan there and keep the dogs barking. Because things have to change.”

• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In France, the France Victimes network can be contacted on 116 006. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html