Gisele Pelicot, utterly floored by this

[twoboystwodogs]

I am totally stunned by what happened to Gisele Pelicot, it is beyond horrific. The violation, the betrayal of trust, and that so many 'normal' men thought what they were doing was OK. I am struggling to find words. I'm not wanting to belittle all the other horrendous cases of violence against women. But to be drugged in your own bed by your husband and your husband allow other men to come in and rape you and he films it and he puts it on the Internet and encourages other men to do this to their wives. For over 10 years. What the actual f###? How much more of this abuse are women going to have to take before something is really done to stop it?

BBC News - Women moved by defiant Gisèle Pelicot in France mass rape trial
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg5g24rr6lo

Utterly horrific. And as well as Gisele and her family and the awful pain they must be feeling, there is also the horror that the families of the men who did this must be feeling. Imagine being the mother, or sister or partner or daughter of the men who raped her. I mean can any of us imagine that? So many people traumatised by this, it doesn't bear thinking about.

There's at least one other wife who was drugged and raped. Chances are there are many many more.

I really can't find the words.

It seems unthinkable that this may yet turn out to be a "Women Talking" scenario, carried out in France, rather than an isolated community in Bolivia.

The bar for basic standards of behaviour and what passes for decency is low enough without some men being able to take this example as indicative of their own comparative virtue in abstaining from such horrors.

It is utterly shocking. And the excuses they've come up with to justify what they did: I didn't realise she was 'asleep', I thought it was ok because her husband said it was. What on earth goes through these people's minds to think this is ok

She had neurological and gynecological problems which she saw doctors about but no-one put two and two together - which, to be fair, I am not really surprised about because really why would you. I've heard come back on the doctors who didn't 'spot' what was going on and the call for doctors to be better trained to spot this. But really, is that the answer - to make sure doctors are able to spot this happening. No, the answer is to severely punish the men who do it and for society to make it very clear that any sex that is not overtly consented to by the woman (or man) is WRONG

If you took a globe and stuck a pin in it, that is the area that these men came from. And also that they all knew about this website, how to access it. It makes me look at all men so differently. Does this go on near me? Are men on my street accessing similar websites? How do these kind of websites even exist? It is all so twisted.

The police found explicit photographs of me that my ex took while I slept.
They are tracing to see if he sold them to porn sites or passed them on.
I don't remember the photos being taken. I do remember waking up some mornings with a splitting headache. He always made me a warm drink last thing at night.
They said it's more common than you'd think.

It's nothing compared to what Gisele has been through, but I'm not surprised so many men thought they could get away with this.

So well said, see my previous post - I am seeing all men in a new light

It makes me look at all men so differently. Does this go on near me?

Was it James Cleverly (currently a candidate for the Conservative leadership contest) who made the crack about rohypnol?

Why, yes it was.

Cleverly told guests at a Downing Street reception that “a little bit of Rohypnol in her drink every night” was “not really illegal if it’s only a little bit”, the Sunday Mirror reported.
He also laughed that the secret to a long marriage was making sure your spouse was “someone who is always mildly sedated so she can never realise there are better men out there”.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/24/james-cleverly-facing-calls-to-resign-after-joke-about-date-drug

After so many "in plain sight" scandals, it's increasingly harder to distinguish between what is intended to be wretched humour or a confession made in a culture of impunity.

Also not all the men who raped her were as yet identified.
So here we are talking about 80 men, given the time of 10 years plus, I reckon its into hundreds.

How many who didnt rape her only because they didnt know how to find the videos the husband uploaded? Yet if they had found the offer to rape a drugged woman, most certainly would have.
Is it going to be a different court case for the daughter and daughter in law?
If anyone knows.

That maths doesn't make any sense though. The real statistic is that he invited approximately 85 men to rape his wife, 80 did it and 5 refused. That's 94% of men that happily engaged in rape when they thought there would be no comeback.

It ties in with women and girls who have been trafficked or otherwise forced into prostitution. All the men who use them...all of them rapists.

There's literally no words, I don't even know how I feel, angry doesn't even come close.

Aisde from that I've also found the way she was treated in court abhorrent along with how many women on here were eager to defend her husband and insist women are just as bad.

It blows my mind that women continue to defend and excuse men

This suggests that you LIKED men before?

OMG I didn't see any women defending him? Where?

There was a post started on aibu I think, after it hit the news.

There were women on there saying women are just as bad as men, that they had only ever been assaulted and attacked by women

There's was plenty of not all men and you must just hate men.

A lot of them are currently on the thread about why men don't consider women's safety and saying that women don't have to consider their safety when out at night but men do and that feminists just want to control women

If it’s the one I’m thinking about I don’t think
it was him specifically, but very quickly the NAMALTS and not my Nigel’s came out, like every other thread where male violence against women gets discussed.

When it was pointed out that not all males were rapists but all rapists were men, one poster (woman apparently) decided that pointing out that women are just as bad and can rape too was entirely appropriate on a thread discussing the rape of this woman by 80 (at least) men. They never seem to start their own threads though about violence against men.

People just love to defend men at the mere mention of VAWG. So, so depressing.

I didn't know of this case, so looked it up - this is the wiki page for DPP v Morgan [1975] HL (I wouldn't normally cite wiki but this is a concise account). We think we have come a long way from this type of mindset (both that of the Courts and of society in general) and then are shocked to discover that whilst the law has moved on, many men have not.

DPP v Morgan - Wikipedia

People just love to defend men at the mere mention of VAWG. So, so depressing.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

But this is what makes it difficult to think we're ever going to be able to have the conversations we need to bring out the necessary reforms and reconstruction of our society.

That is sickening, absolutely horrendous. I hope he pays for what he did to you.

Honestly, I do believe that women being raped by men is the default state for our species. And it's only due to the threat of discovery, prosecution, societal pressure etc., that stops men from doing it all the time.

I know it's not the done thing to say this but we should be grateful for living in these times because I think women's lives get progressively more awful the further back in time you go.

The story itself is awful.
But I’m more repulsed by the men, their answer to it (It wasn’t rape, I thought I had her consent because her dh said so etc….).

Ive been following the trial closely (French journalists and reports). I’m going to bet many of them will walk scotch free. In part due to the French law and the definition of rape
eg a guy, (another case btw) well known and respected, raped 4 young men after making them drink to excess. He walked free because the men didn’t say they didn’t want the sex. They were sleeping and drunk….

Plus it’s the fact that out of 10 men who contact ted him, 7 said Yes to the set up. The other 3 said No but never reported it. Men protecting men,

The other thing that makes me sick is the pushback from men in France when women say ‘this and that happened to me too’.

NotAllMen bollocks because how awful they feel that someone might think THEY could be like that.
Never mind that most women act like they are put of preservation and know to only relax their guard with people they know (and we know even that isn’t enough….)

Someone asked up thread why did he film it.

Because for him a large part was the sharing of porn on the internet.

I have no doubt that extreme abuse of women had gone on since whenever.

But what is happening now is that some of the quite weak social norms that a supposedly more educated society are being erased by porn being freely available (and a money maker) so men who might have thought this isn't acceptable now take it to be the norm.

In other words, with the internet which began as an unregulated space, the first thing that happened was the sharing of porn. (There's now quite an old story but the first computer network created between 2 colleges was done not for any educational purpose but to share porn.)

So not sure that all the men were local, as the porn share online group was far wider.