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

Another point which some newspaper have covered that there is evidence he was leading up to exploiting his daughter as he had taken nude photos of her.

And not sure of the details (which are going to be more grossness) is that he was also said to be taking an interest in his daughter in law.

And that's the other aspect, once it becomes "normal" men like this just want to push any boundaries they might have even further.

It's horrific. And I'm also appalled at the comments from French men who've been asked about their thoughts on the case - as PP said, they basically don't give a shit. And that explains A. Lot.

Giselle deserves to never have to interact with another man again - unless she expressly chooses too.

I fear this will be the outcome too.

As for the 3 out of 10 men who didn't say yes to the set up but never reported it, maybe they didn't say yes (or report it) because they were busy raping elsewhere.

Oh yes, esp seeing the name of the website they used…..

@IwantToRetire another interesting reaction has been the one from PornH* who had to put a block on ‘sleeping woman’ as a search term. And delete all the videos around that I believe.

Once again, the knew very well those women didn’t consent.
They knew and still used them.

But porn is all fine because these are consenting women yes?

Not going into the fact men read the news and then thought it would be exciting to go and watch some. Fathers, husbands, partners. Well respected members of the society who wouldn’t hurt anyone 🤮🤮🤮🤮

It just gets worse and worse. How are we ever going to get change with people like this in power?

The word that keeps coming into my mind over this case is 'disquieting.' There's something deeply unsettling about women discovering that even in their own home, in their sleep, in the presence of their own husband they still cannot relax one moment of their vigilance against rape and exploitation. It's men letting women know there is nowhere for women to be safe and undefiled. It's the fact that this woman was walking amongst men who had enacted their contempt upon her and that her obliviousness was turning her every possible ordinary interaction with the men who had done this (or watched it or encouraged it) into a further act of humiliation. The ability of men to reduce a woman's entire humanity into pornography is just so bleak but unsurprising.

Wtf?

I remember reading that right after Russia invaded Ukraine, that site was inundated with search terms which included ‘Ukrainian woman’. I’ve never been able to get that out of my mind. We all know what can happen to women in the path of soldiers, but the knowledge of that just feeds the recreation time of some men, it seems.

@IwantToRetire .. this article implies that at least some of the rapists were local.. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvpd7zyprdo the women interviewed recognised some of the names.

It is shocking that the Mayor is seeking to minimise the crimes because being conscious, a child or killed would be worse.

Thank you everyone who has contributed to this discussion. It is very very hard to process such an insight into the horrors that lurk in the minds of men.

@IwantToRetire .. this article implies that at least some of the rapists were local.. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvpd7zyprdo the women interviewed recognised some of the names.

It is shocking that the Mayor is seeking to minimise the crimes because being conscious, a child or killed would be worse.

Thank you everyone who has contributed to this discussion. It is very very hard to process such an insight into the horrors that lurk in the minds of men.

They are ALL local, just a few miles from where they lived.
One of them was their NDN that she met and thought ‘he was a nice, polite person’

There is also some rumours that some of them are ‘well people’ in the area (aka your local maire, doctor etc….) but because they are so visible they can’t be touched.

I personally don’t believe that. But there is a long history in France of those trials then giving a ‘not guilty’ result.

The other aspect which I first I wasn't aware of, and is almost as shocking, is the impact this had on her physical and mental health.

I dont know why, maybe from when the story was first reported some time ago, it was as though she had no idea of any problems.

Now to know that during this time she was being coerced whilst conscious into believing she had mental health problems and was inexplicable physically ill.

Not sure how many years this was but imagine coping with this every day.

And of course nobody thought to look at what was going on in her home life.

Just the most repulsive doubling down on her exploitation. Can only imagine how much her husband enjoyed helping to make out she was losing her mind.

Caroline Darian (her daughter) recounted learning of the alleged abuse on 2 November 2020 from her mother after she had spoken to investigators.

“My life was literally turned upside down. My mother said: ‘I spent most of the day at the police station. Your father drugged me to rape me with strangers. I was made to look at the photos.’

“It was what you call a tipping point, the start of a slow descent into hell where you have no idea how low you will sink,” she said, breaking down into tears. I called my brothers … We didn’t know what was happening to us.”

Darian had left the room in tears on Tuesday less than 20 minutes into the second day of the trial, as the presiding judge recounted how naked photomontages of her had also been found on Dominique Pélicot’s computer in a folder titled “Around my daughter, naked”.

Darian in 2022 wrote a book called Et j’ai cessé de t’appeler papa (“And I stopped calling you dad”) about the effect the discovery of the crimes had on the family.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/06/daughter-of-french-man-who-invited-men-to-rape-mother-speaks-of-descent-into-hell-dominique-pelicot-gisele-pelicot

We assume the society is progressing forever forward, but Afghanistan shows absolutely that for women it can go backwards, and fast.

I was born in 1970 when women in Afghanistan had comparative freedom. In my lifetime they have lost it all.

We have to fight HARD to retain our freedom.

I see us going backwards in the west, I think that VAWAG is worse today.

The effect wasn’t reported on initially. Which I find media should be intensely criticised for.
There is always terrible effects on the body and mind from abuse and sexual abuse, and I think this should be reported in a sensible way.

Remember the case from USA with that vile swimmer who raped an unconscious young woman. In the court case the focus was on how sad it was for him to face consequences fir what he did. The woman has spent a lot of time to turn that story into how horrible the consequences were for her. We have still a way to go on that.

She was told she was probably developing dementia due to her ‘memory problems’. You know the little sides effects of the medications she was given …

I see us going backwards in the west, I think that VAWAG is worse today.

Yes there's a lot out there which might make us think that. E.g. when I think of porn and the effect it has on mens minds. Worse today than when though? A lot of what leads me to think it may be worse now is that it's getting reported more, and women have the means to discuss it freely (so we hear about it more). And that's actually one reason it's better now.

When I ask myself, would I rather be a woman alive now or fifty years ago, or a hundred or five hundred, I always land on 'now'.

But then you hear about a case like this, and of course this couldn't have happened without the internet and modern sleeping pills. I suppose in history this sort of thing will still have happened, he'd have just locked her up in a room and brought men in from the street. But it wouldn't have got discovered and broadcast around the world. And if it did get discovered she'd have been the one thrown in prison for some sort of moral crimes.

So yeah, I'll stick with 'it's better now' but better is a relative term, I'm not saying everything's fine and dandy, far from it.

Sorry for the derail

I don't think so, and this is why, and I hope it gives us... hope?

There was a baboon troupe in Kenya which had the usual aggressive male behaviour for the species, aggression to other males as they fought for dominance and harassment of females. The dominant males all contracted disease and died altering the gender balance of the troupe. The culture changed from one of aggression to much less aggression and more grooming behaviours, and it stayed that way. The researchers came back to revisit the troupe 7 years later and found the culture still less aggressive with more grooming.

So if baboons can do it, I reckon humans can do it. Any man claiming "it's just our biology" can be responded to with "so you think baboons are better than human men?" because that's essentially what they're saying.

Our culture can change. We can go from the current unacceptably high rates of sexual violence and degradation of women and girls, to a much more peaceful and gentle society, if we do it consciously.

IMO we need VERY harsh minimum sentences for sexual violence, a massive focus on changing culture in police and judiciary to make sexual violence a top priority for successful convictions, and changing laws about consent. Rather than "did she say no?" the law needs to state consent must be proven so "did she say yes?".

https://www.upworthy.com/something-fascinating-happened-after-these-male-baboons-died-men-should-keep-this-in-mind

@IwantToRetire

Can only imagine how much her husband enjoyed helping to make out she was losing her mind

It's terrible that not only was he abusing her physically but also making her think she was going crazy. That's some level of gaslighting. I think he was also accompanying her to appointments. You wonder how he got all those strong sleeping pills. Maybe the GP/doctor was complicit in the whole thing.

I put this on another thread about Giselle, but there is a style of porn where c a call is put out to ordinary men, not actors, to come and abuse a single woman in a warehouse. About 50 men at once will come and they will all abuse her, and they all ejaculate on her face. Just ordinary men in the locality all come to do this to her.

I read a transcript of a police interview of one man being prosecuted (police raided the warehouse and found video footage of the woman crying and saying she was scared and did not want to do it, so they were able to prosecute the men for rape), and he was shown footage of what he and the other men did and he started crying and saying he would kill any man who did that to his wife. But he still went and joined and mob of men to abuse that young woman. And then its put online. It started in Japan, this style, but has spread around the world. The case I am talking was in France.

So many men will abuse women if they have the opportunity and the thinnest of reasons to tell themselves its ok.

What?
What fresh hell?

That’s it. I’m forming a vendetta style mob to Re-educate these guys in the spirit of the Baboons.

@Silkinside

That is extremely disturbing 😳 how on earth do they come up with such horrible ideas?

But, what the fuck? Is that something that happens often? And men just - go and do it?

How?