Gisele Pelicot defendants described

Me too. Everywhere I go, I wonder if the men around me would do this.

Thank you.

I work mostly with men and I'm looking at each one of them thinking "what about you? what would you do to me if there was no HR and no police?"

I've been doing the same. NAMALT is looking less and less tenable.

It's not a single moment of "Greer was right", it's a cascade of moments, one after another an endless flood of appalled revelation. My chest feels tight and I feel sick.

I work mostly with men and I'm looking at each one of them thinking "what about you? what would you do to me if there was no HR and no police?"

The lesbian separatists who made their own Womyn's Lands had the right idea.

I've been avoiding quite a few stories lately, for the exact same reason. Just when you thought the scales had really fallen, you realise it's only the first of half a dozen layers.

As 'actually did it' figures, those are possibly even more depressing than the 1 in 3. At least that was a theoretical 'Would you if you absolutely knew you'd get away with it without consequences?' - so you'd hope in reality a fair number would be held back by fear of being caught if not by morality.

One more: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4589177/

Of the sample, 33% (n = 113) reported that they had perpetrated some form of sexual assault. The most serious sexual assault described by 15% (n = 51) of the total sample involved sexual contact: for 10% (n = 34), it was coerced sexual intercourse; for 3% (n = 9), it was attempted rape; and 5% (n = 19) had perpetrated an act that met the standard legal definition of rape. The attempted and completed rape groups were combined (n = 28) for the analyses reported in this article, both because attempted rape is considered legally to be a form of rape and because of the relatively small number of men in the attempted rape group. Of the men who reported that they had committed a sexual assault, 78% acknowledged committing more than one (mdn = 4).

Here's a couple of links:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4484276/

https://jimhopper.com/topics/sexual-assault-and-the-brain/repeat-rape-by-college-men/

I haven't seen anything as high as 1 in 3, but 5 to 15% of men will admit having committed an act that meets the legal (I assume in the US) definition of rape, if you ask the right question. And much higher for sexual assault.

Do they all have the same one?

I'm not following this closely as I won't be able to function in society if my opinion of men gets any lower.

Their defence attorney. Using past abuse as an excuse in court should be outlawed.

It shouldn’t be allowed to make a difference anyway.

I wonder who told them all to claim sexual abuse in childhood?

And if it was the same person who told them to pretend they were afraid of the rapist Pelicot.

That’s ok, I’ll have a Google. Thanks!

Not to hand, I'm afraid. Will have a dig and see if I can remember where I found it.

Sorry if I've missed a link, but do you have the source for this? It is pretty horrifying and very much suggests that it's only the legally weighted word 'rape', which makes clear that there might be consequences, that puts these men off.

Thank you, yes I think we actually agree. Sorry for miscommunicating in my original post, and for any offense caused. I should have taken more care when writing about a sensitive subject.

Not all abused go in to be abusers but there is a correlation. Others harm themselves instead with drugs, alcohol or suicide.

The wonderful psychologist Alice Miller thought the difference between those abused who became harmful to others or themselves, and those who do not, was that the latter may have had the chance to be heard by an empathetic witness.

None of this means these men are not guilty of rape or that their pasts should be mitigation for their crime.

It is worth looking at the evidence though at what massive harm is caused to the psyche of children when they suffer abuse.

Read again your last post and yes, do understand more what you meant.

Oh cross posted. Okay, yes I understand more what you mean I think.

We will have to disagree then. They were on a site called without her knowledge. They had no idea whatsoever if they would find her attractive. They did not care. They were going there to have sex and to rape. They backed out not because of her attractiveness, but because of something separate to that. They were on that site and then present at the door because of something that was so entirely separate to an actual live person in front of them. It was always about them and their depravities and never about her and what she was or was not according to them. She was not even human to them.

I will just say I changed the wording of that post several times, and decided to add Gisele’s name in to humanise her (and took out Dominique’s as he is worthless). I had originally said something like “didn’t fancy what Dominique was offering” then “didn’t fancy the situation” and that all sounded wrong too.

In tinkering with the wording it ended up with more of a focus on “fancying Gisele” than I intended, as I lost sight of the totality of my post. I hope my last post clarified what I was trying to say, and I did not intend any insensitive wording.

I was not “assessing her attractiveness”. It is common sense that rapists will not be attracted to every victim or every situation - or they’d be raping at every opportunity. It’s not a reflection of anyone’s attractiveness if a rapist decides a potential victim doesn’t quite fit into their depraved fantasies.

The point I was making was that the men who turned down the chief rapist may have done so because it didn’t personally appeal to them, not for ethical objections.

There are many other aspects outside of favoured victim type that could cause a rapist not to be interested in the available victim. Maybe Dominique was too intimidating. Maybe his whole set up with making them not wear a condom made them feel scared of leaving DNA evidence. Maybe they were smokers so self-excluded. Given that they were on a site called “without her knowledge” any of these are probably more likely than suddenly developing a moral compass.

Honestly the way you phrased your post @WishinAndHopin is that you were providing an assessment about the victim's attractiveness from the point of view of a a perpetrator. If you cannot actually see and understand why this is inappropriate - given the circumstances- then you may need to have a deeper think about it.

Thanks for this brand new information 🙄

I don’t know why you told me that but as it happens, I don’t agree. Many rapists will have an “ideal” type of victim as an integral part of their fantasy.

Some rapists barely even distinguish between rape and sex. They are not always seeking power over the victim, some just want sex, and have insufficient empathy to see it as any different.

Rape is not about attraction, it's about power.

Sexual abuse in all it's forms is about power.

HTH @WishinAndHopin