Gisele Pelicot defendants described

That was a very good article. Thanks for posting it.

Christina Lamb has written a longish article in the Times, tw you may want to skip the paragraph headed The World's Most Neglected War Crime

https://archive.ph/XIag7

https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/url-gisele-pelicot-trial-france-sexual-violence-kdf0jq0b3

I read in another article that the computer file labelled 'photographs of my daughter naked' was empty, the contents erased. They found a photo of her, overlooked, in a different folder. According to Pelicot his family, when he was a child, was rife with sexual abuse. Rape culture including incest have often been mentioned together as issues that French society must confront. In short, I believe Caroline.

This was the mysterious mystery that Professor Gwen Adshead was grappling with in her Reith Lectures 😀

Mine was a genuine question.

What makes the difference to their outcomes, I wonder?
Now what could that difference be...?🤔

It should never be used as a reason for a lesser sentence.

And these rapists could have been lying in order to try to manipulate the jury.

That does not mean though that an adult who was abused as a child is not more likely than someone who was not to commit a crime, including a sexual one. Of course not all but it is known a proportion do.

In a sample of 2,759 CSA victims who were abused between 1964 and 1995, it was found CSA victims were almost five times more likely than the general population to be charged with any offence than their non-abused counterparts, with strongest associations found for sexual and violent offences.

https://www.aic.gov.au
PDF
Child sexual abuse and subsequent offending and victimisation

Other victims of csa will grow up to be particularly empathetic to and caring of children.

Yet others may be violent to themselves in some way through drugs, eating disorders, depression, suicide etc

What makes the difference to their outcomes, I wonder?

It just seems to now be par for the course for defendants in sex abuse cases to ask for some past trauma to be taken into account. A man I vaguely knew was convicted of the worst category child abuse images offences and his defence argued that he had been damaged by childhood abuse himself. No custodial sentence. A man (a retired policeman) in a Belfast court the other day got off with indecent assault because he said he was moving the victim out of his 'personal space' (by touching her on the backside) as her presence triggered flashbacks of being caught up in a riot or some nonsense like that. Even Huw Edwards had some ludicrous sob story about having a domineering father and not getting into his preferred university. Obviously he didn't get prison time either.

This is true, it's just the double standard that bothers me.

I bet none of them have proof that it happened in the form of convictions.

Without disagreeing with your general point that they might have been lying, I cannot agree with what you said above.

Infinitesimally few sexually abused people have proof that it happened in the form of convictions, let alone those who were children when it happened.

I don't believe that all of these men were sexually abused. They're just making excuses and looking for sympathy. I bet none of them have proof that it happened in the form of convictions.

I find it interesting how women are disbelieved - even Gisele Pelicot with video evidence - yet men claiming sexual victimisation are always taken at their word, even if they are depraved rapists with something to gain.

Trauma does not beget trauma. Trauma can be stopped and not passed on. Passing on trauma is a choice.
I really object to the idea that having been sexually abused in childhood in any way explains (I accept you don't claim it excuses it) going on to sexually abuse children in adulthood.

If this was true, the majority of sexual abusers of children would be women, because the majority of sexually abused children are girls - but only a tiny minority of sexual abusers of children are female. In my experience, women who have been sexually abused in childhood are not at all 'devoid of empathy' - they are more likely to be campaigners against sexual abuse, than perpetrators of it.

Men can choose to do likewise - my father was badly abused as a child, and decided that he would never lay a finger on his children, and would instead give us all the security and love he had been deprived of in his childhood. And if he could make that choice, so could any male survivor of sexual abuse.

Having been fortunate enough to have a father who was not abusive, I had the misfortune to be sexually abused by a neighbour. So I know what the trauma of sexual abuse is like, and therefore, far from wishing to pass it on in the negative chain of trauma, the so-called cycle of abuse, I would never ever inflict that trauma on anybody else.

The backstories of the defendants in the Pelicot case had to be presented because their lawyers had to do everything in their power to defend their clients, including playing the sympathy card; fortunately the judges saw through it, and held the men responsible for what they, as grown up men, choose to do.

I'm sorry Yatzydog, I hope what I've written doesn't come across as too combative, it's just something I feel very strongly about from personal experience, and I get emotional about it.

Upset by the topic, not at you Yatzydog

I do so agree with all you say.

France has always been appallingly misogynistic. Britain is a very long way ahead of most of the world in the basics of feminism, unfortunately.

Another comment by Janice Turner, specifically about the role porn plays:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/06e0d90b-7f69-40c6-862f-487875fb081b?shareToken=981f8835eeece8326bd9093db97a9289

The men are scum. Here is one quote from the article:

He had denied rape and told the court: “I’m not a rapist, but if I had wanted to rape I wouldn’t have chosen a 57-year-old woman, I would have chosen a pretty one.”

They seem to object to the words "rapist" and "rape" the most.

Although I do have some sympathy in some of the awful biographies of some. Trauma begets trauma. It passes on down. Not excusing them at all, but I doubt some of these men would be so devoid of empathy had they have not suffered violent or sexual abuse when younger. For me, rather than excuses it shows what work is needed to break these negative chains. But it makes me depressed that in our increasingly self-centered society it won't happen.

Perhaps the police should go through Bruschi's computer?

Christophe Bruschi continues to show his contempt for women, out side of the court - he does not believe that women who have shown up outside of the court are there to support Gisèle, but that they are there to taunt men and to deny them their right to access women's bodies in what ever way they please. his behaviour out side of the court tells us even more about how men see women.

I cannot understand why this is legal as it is so likely to cause harm, just as it wouldn’t be legal if someone invited punches and cuts from all comers if they were to take up the invitation.

That's a great article @Lalgarh , thanks for linking to it. And I think the author is spot on in also referencing the 'pure passivity and cognitive oblivion' of AGP porn. She quotes Andrea Long Chu but it's such a common theme among these men.
The libfems have been uncharacteristically quiet about Phillips - basically a sex worker - because what can they say?

The convicted men have 10 days to lodge an appeal. At least 2 have already done so.

Is that the woman who allowed 100 men to screw her as a stunt for Only Fans? She's mentioned in that Unherd article on the Pelicot case.

She said she was doing this because she EMPOWAD as a WUMMUN and is proud of her sexxxy body andthis was her fantasy. Then she burst into tears shortly afterwards https://unherd.com/2024/12/the-triumph-of-gisele-pelicot/

As for Phillips herself, she claimed the event was her fantasy and that she enjoyed it — but broke down in tears afterwards. Even the men who turned up to use her begged for relatedness, Phillips reported, but were briskly sent on their way. Thus Phillips’ enframing of herself even extended to the male participants, creating an industrial conveyor-belt of impersonal rutting for the hungry OnlyFans camera frame.

Nice when the learned professionals conduct themselves with dignity.

I couldn't read the Daily Mail article but I chased it up in the French media-
he is Christophe Bruschi. He did indeed shout at the demonstrators outside 'Mon client est libre, il vous remercie et il vous dit merde !' 'My client is free, he thanks you, and he tells you to ..' literally it is 'he says shit to you' but 'he tells you to piss off' might by a suitable translation.

He called them hysterical and, as lcakethereforeIam said, likened them to the women who knitted while watching heads roll during the French Revolution.
He is now saying that he isn't anti-feminist, he's just against those feminists subjecting his client and the other defendants to abuse during the trial, who are doing a disservice to the feminist cause🙄 And 'tricoteuses' is just an historical reference.

His and El Bouroumi's actions and words have been widely criticised and it remains to be seen if they are formally sanctioned for their behaviour. I suspect they are both relishing the publicity.

I can't help thinking about this and the Lily Phillips story at the same time. Yes, the men in the Phillips case weren't rapists (not in the legal sense anyway) and she has got very rich through her stunt and the notoriety it's engendered, but really how profoundly depressing it is that there are so many men who will abuse a woman's body like a literal piece of meat if it's offered up to them.

I'm assuming he's comparing them to the women who knitted while watching people being guillotined. I'm not au fait with French metaphors but I'd think he was calling them ghouls.