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

I just want to focus for a moment on the amazing courage of Gisele Pelicot.

What was done to her is unimaginably horrific, and the fact that she responded by waiving anonymity and appearing in court, head held high, to face her husband/abuser/rapist is incredibly brave.

She is also dealing with the emotional damage of find out that it was her chosen life partner, her “super guy”, the good father and doting grandfather, the classic 'Not my Nigel', who had been doing this to her since 2011.

Unbelievably brave.

You're referring to DP?

I hadn't heard that.

He's admitted all charges.

Avec vous, indeed. May we never forget her.

Yes. I just read it in El Pais. I had assumed that all this just came up now and it's all being discovered retrospectively, and still may be, but from what I gather from this it does look like he had been arrested before (I'm assuming Gisele and the family knew nothing)

https://english.elpais.com/international/2024-09-10/dominique-pelicot-the-great-guy-who-was-a-monster.html#

Edit: It looks like the 1999 one might be retrospective following his more recent arrest, but he was arrested in 2010 for upskirting.

'According to the police investigation, the accused could in fact be a serial rapist. After his arrest in 2020, investigators implicated him in two other cases. In the fall of 2022, already under arrest, he was charged with the 1991 rape and murder of Sophie Narme, 23, in the 19th arrondissement of Paris. He denied the accusations brought by the cold case unit, dedicated to serial or unsolved crimes and based in Nanterre. These are accusations “based solely on conjecture,” denounced his lawyer, Béatrice Zavarro. But Pélicot was also charged with an attempted rape in Seine-et-Marne in 1999. In this case, his DNA was found at the scene and he admitted the crime, but denied having used a weapon. The modus operandi was always the same: both women were drugged with ether “during a visit to an apartment; both victims were real estate agents,” according to the Nanterre prosecutor’s office. Dominique P. was also involved in the buying and selling of apartments.'

' An expert psychiatrist detected in him a “paraphilic deviation,” that is, a penchant for sexual acts with non-consensual people, which includes “voyeurism and somnophilia.” “The fact that his wife is inert increases his feeling of control,” said the psychiatrist.'

What is the cost to women, to society, of men's paraphilias?

What is the cost to women, to society, of men's paraphilias?

Oh, they're all just "kinks" apparently and we nasty uptight wimms shouldn't be so prudish.

I don't fully know why this feels like an additional blow to the solar plexus but it does.

It also makes a nonsense of his effectively attributing his use of drugs to the nurse he met online in 2009(?) who instructed him on how to drug GP successfully.

I have questions about this case, though don't know if they can be answered.

Why hasn't the mayor of the town been forced out of his role for minimising this horrific crime to the world's press? He basically said, well no one died and no kids were involved.

Why did it take three years to close down the website where the rapist husband recruited his fellow rapists after he was found out?

How did so many men know about this website in such a small area?

Why isn't there more of a focus on the 20 local rapists still not caught in the vicinity of Mazan? Haven't seen any English language or French articles about the search for them. A bbc piece quoted a local woman as being terrified knowing they were around but the headline was something bland like 'a town torn apart'

Yes, and that is the weird bit.
Clearly, the men who just can’t help themselves are not fit to partake in society. At all. Tough luck.
There are enough men who are. We don’t need the ones who can’t to put it bluntly.

Sorry if I remember incorrectly, but if you were FOR a curfew for men who have History of dodgy behaviour, I am in agreement.

Men who are perfectly fine to behave would probably welcome such a development too.

Jesus. Just caught up on his previous rapes and am wondering how the hell he got away with those.

Aargh. Forgot to Edit.
The curfew should be in a locked facility, not in their homes.

Yes I'm all for a curfew
Most people I talk to think a penis licence/curfew is going too far but that's because they can't view male sexual incontinence as a problem and don't appreciate women might want to live life without being raped or sexually assaulted by these men.

I get miscarriages of justice. I know it happens. But what if its a clear case that's been admitted to and proven?

Or, despite being found guilty and sentenced, do we not take the action just in case?

In which case, how can we ever truly trust the justice system?

Just pondering BTW, not arguing

@YellowphantGrey ,For me, and I'm not being argumentative either, there could be a situation where a person confesses because of undue pressure from the police. I realize that interviews are now recorded, but a person with a learning disability for example, where there is no appropriate adult might confess just to get some respite.
I mean having seen the Met in action would you trust them to get it right, because I don't.
Until every police officer does everything absolutely correctly, and that won't happen, I think a custodial is the only correct punishment. Not castration, or the death penalty.

Castration removes the physical ability to rape, but not the will to rape.
Given that rape is about power over women, the castrated rapist would just choose another way to inflict humiliation and injury. It might be non-sexual violence, but it could also be rape with an object.
Castration might work if rape was just about sex, but rape is much more than a horrific individual sex act, it's also a means of control of all women, by creating a climate of threat and danger we are all subjected to.

The need for control, to exert control, is key. It's a form of sadistic bullying.

Inadequate, tedious little men who need to desperately try to prove themselves to be top of the heap, and do so by hurting women. Men's egos, oy vay.

BTW I'm not certain that castration would actually prevent the man being able to get an ercction. The castrati who were subject to that to retain their boy soprano voices were actually popular with women because they could still have sex but were not fertile. I'm not saying all we're capable, but enough.
And clearly the defence would then be 'but I'm castrated and therefore incapable of sex'.

In theory I agree with this.
In practice I can see it simply adding to the problem. Presumably men would be allowed to move around during curfew hours IF accompanied by women (indeed many women would no doubt want this).
So the danger is that men would spend their non-curfew hours trying to find a woman to accompany them when restricted.

Just going back to some of yesterday's discussion, but according to a news report I heard that "husband" admitted to the crimes (with all the I suffered to excuses) but also made clear that getting access to the internet in 2011 just opened up so many "opportunities" he just couldn't help himself. Let alone the opportunity to meet up with like minded men.

I am not in any way excusing him as an individual, but what the interent has done (partly through being dominated by men in the early days) is that it created this value free space where men could behave how they really wanted to, and none of the social norms, or women nagging them to behave, needed to be bothered about. A bit like a virtual Lord of the Fleis.

That's whats so blatant. Is that without social controls men cannot be trusted.

A curfew wouldn't be enough.

This case is so vile, its really beyond words. Such a shame they couldn't identify 30 of the men in the videos. 30 other men who will undoubtedly be saying to their families how awful this is, whilst knowing inside that they were involved too. Disgusting

Just heard one of the (male) locals on the UK news 'The family can get over this - no one died, no one died'
That's OK then.

He was in touch with another man, I'm assuming one of the ones kept in custody, who did the same with his wife. Seems there was some quid pro quo. They took their wives (all unsuspecting) to be sized up, meeting some of the men in shopping centres (just 'accidentally' ran into them). The women were being auditioned! He secretly filmed his daughters-in-law naked in the bathroom! I'm...lack of consent is what makes it fun for them.

Yes indeed. Common to most paraphilias, if not all.

The coercion is the point.