Sadly the Pelicot court case is not the only one that shows women of all ages are not safe from the men in their homes

[IwantToRetire]

The man, named only as Rafael CDVM, was convicted in Cadiz, Spain, for repeatedly sexually assaulting his 83-year-old mother, who later died

and

a 27-year-old father was jailed for 17 years for raping and “prostituting” his seven-month-old daughter, and distributing footage of the abuse online. The man, named only as Santiago, had been under investigation since 2022 for circulating over 100 videos and 270 images of child pornography. Spanish police later discovered he had filmed two assaults on his daughter at his flat in Aluche, south-west Madrid.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/twisted-man-kept-elderly-mother-35118477

The sickness.

A 7 month old baby clear, an 83 year old women

Immediate male relatives.

In their own homes.

Male violence against women, especially sexual violence is a global problem. We might have a slightly thinner veneer of civilisation in the U.K., comparatively speaking, but globally, women and girls are subjected to horrific assaults on a daily basis - places like Pakistan, the Congo etc are appalling places to live for women - so forgive me if I take a less rose tinted, parochial view. I’ve suffered several sexual assaults throughout my life, from childhood, as well as two abusive relationships and all at the hands of men. So by all means do think of the poor men, but I’m happy to remind myself that there’s still far too much male sexual violence in the world to give them, as a sex class, a free pass.

one of Gisele Pelicot's rapists was a firefighter.

If you start a thread, shouldn’t you expect a discussion to be the result? Or did you just want a whole lot of seals to cry along in desperation at the horror in the world ? Many people will have that reaction of ‘not all men’ to these stories in which men do shocking things. They are right - it’s not all men. We know that. So in what way does it serve women to discuss these crimes? Why are women so interested in true crime podcasts and crime fiction? It must serve a purpose for us right? So that’s what the ‘not all men’ people need to develop understanding about. Maybe that’s why they comment on these threads. Maybe some of them are genuinely trying to understand. I think we need to share these stories so that as women, we keep a healthy level of skepticism about us when men make claims or demands. That we stay alert around men - and unsupervised access by them to children and other vulnerable people comes with some robust caveats, and checks. That we realise that even fathers, brothers, grandfathers, sons can be rapists, or enablers of rapists. Love them but never forget this.

It's facts like, women getting married or getting into a relationship with a man increases your chance of being murdered by something like 20%
But men getting married or into a long term relationship with a woman their life expectancy increases by 5-6% - that piss you off.

It's not "hating men" it's just an overall sense of unfairness.

It's a good question as to why men are more violent and there's a lot of evidence to suggest that hormones play a large part. I note that a lot of feminists will vehemently argue against this and the cynical side of me wonders if it's because it's harder to demonise somebody whose actions are influenced at least in part by biological factors outside of their control.

For millennia upon millennia aggression was a necessary part of human survival, and millions of years worth of programming probably can't be switched off in the space of a couple of hundred years. People will argue otherwise but in almost every mammal the male is more aggressive. Like bull elephants in 'musth' when their testosterone rises sharply and they become extremely aggressive and unpredictable.

It's proven to be linked to the human fight or flight response and it's also been evidenced that violent offenders have higher levels. It's also been found that increasing levels within the natural range makes both sexes more aggressive. But it's pretty much a certainty that none of us would be here today without our ancestors having fought to survive.

I agree that discussion is key. However, saying how much you hate men (not you specifically, that is) isn't really the same. It's the difference between saying that we need to discuss misogynistic traditions in the Muslim community that contribute to honour killings or how black teenagers turn to crime due to the lack of a father figure. Both of these are very different to just saying "I hate Muslims/POC even more than I did before".

There are always underlying factors behind why different demographics perpetrate particular crimes - e.g. men being the primary abusers of women, and women being the primary abusers of children.

I agree.

But I would add that it's actually 'not most men' and that in aggregate women present more of a threat to children than men do going by the statistics. An uncomfortable truth but no less true.

No one has said ‘most men’, not that I’ve seen anyway. But what women here have done is rightly express frustration at the sheer numbers of men and the sheer depravity of the crimes committed by these men, specifically against women and children. It’s not even the matter of aggression that you rightly identify that is likely aggravated by testosterone. It’s the sex crimes against utterly helpless babies and elderly mothers, or unconscious drugged wives, for which little aggression is required. Just access and a desire to humiliate, and cause maximum psychological pain to victims. The only aggregate statistics around women’s abuse of children are, and you must be able to intuit this, explained by the fact that women do the vast majority of care work. So if 95% of truck journeys are completed by men you would expect the vast majority of truck accidents to be caused by men. Statistics on abuse also often don’t account for severity and and sex bias in reporting. If you quote the one on newborns, murder and women - mate, we’ve heard it all before. If you’ve come onto this thread - this one place where women share their exasperation at their fear of and vulnerability to men and a sexual violence - to wag your finger at us for looking for answers and venting our distress, then you are in the wrong place. If you want to show empathy and willingness to help good men to help bad men, please do that.

Unfortunately, you picked an unfortunate group to make your point.

There have been numerous reports on the news/radio 4 in recent years about male firefighters: the general misogynist culture in that profession but also horrifically, how many of them will go into a woman’s house, root around her underwear drawer and just generally do disgusting things in the house.

I can’t write about my own family’s experience with male partners as it’s too outing - but it’s been terrible.

It’s happening EVERYWHERE on all scales. I don’t believe for one second there are more men ‘saving lives’ than abusing women and children (and the number of the latter is growing thanks to the internet).

It is sickening but I honestly can’t say I am surprised. Many men are depraved. That is why, when invited to take part in a heinous act they go along with it or not even report it if they don’t as in the Pelicot case. It makes you wonder how many are “good” simply for a lack of opportunity. I remember a study they did of college students in the US and a good proportion of men said they would rape a girl if it wasn’t illegal. Scary.

LastRoIo · Today 01:29

Sorry, is this the area where we're supposed to hate men?

Unfortunately, as a sex class, it is men who are carrying out these horrific crimes.

Exactly, it’s so disheartening to say the least 😣 those kids/womens are going to battle such trauma.

It's where women are centred and we discuss things that impact women. If discussing the rape of a baby is hating men, well I'm OK with that.

I don’t believe for one second there are more men ‘saving lives’ than abusing women and children (and the number of the latter is growing thanks to the internet).

I said more men saving lives than doing things like in this stories (i.e. taking lives).

In the UK, 156 women were murdered in the year ending 2024. With over 31m men in the country that's 0.0004% of men murdering women if we assume each case involved an individual male.

0.0004% is a tiny amount statistically, even if it's a higher percentage than women. If we can say that this makes men as a group violent then there are lots of other sweeping statements we could make.

Like we could say women as a group are criminals as the figure is much higher than 0.0004% (something like 9% I think). But obv most people would find that ridiculous for good reason.

If discussing the rape of a baby is hating men, well I'm OK with that.

No, the two are different things.

We can talk about knife crime in black communities without saying we hate black people. We can talk about Islamic terrorism without saying we hate Muslims.

Discussing and acknowledging an issue is entirely different from using it a lazy excuse to express bigoted sentiments. Most women believe in equality but statistically the majority reject feminism nowadays citing negative attitudes towards men as one of the principle reasons.

Working together as a society is how things get sorted. The decent people both male and female. Most people understand this. Working with the Muslim community, the male demographic, the black community, etc. Encouraging division and whipping up hate does more harm than good in almost every situation.

I should ignore the troll but okay I’ll bite…

Why would you talk about knife crime specifically in the Black community anyway? Are you aware that cities like Glasgow which are predominantly white have a longstanding knife crime problems mainly involving white males? Glasgow was the stabbing/murder capital of Europe for many years. Things have improved substantially in the last decade, due to a lot of work to address it, since I’ve left - but it was really extreme violence growing up in the 90s. And it’s still not great. Especially combined with the sectarian violence - again mainly white Scottish males doing this.

Funny how no-one linked knife crime to white males back then it was always just the obvious link between deprivation in Glasgow and violence that was made . But when it’s black males from similarly deprived communities suddenly it’s about blackness/race…hmm.

Re, “Muslim terrorists”- do you know more white right wing people are being arrested for terorrism?

Also another problem with your analogy or comparison is the biggest victims the of so called “Black knife crime problem ” are Black males. Most victims of Muslim terrorists worldwide are Muslim too.

Conversely the kind of very specific and grotesque violence we are seeing increasingly from men isn’t just men killing men (although yes they’re doing that too) - it’s the fact far too many are terrorising the other half of the population.

And who is whipping up hate again men anyway by discussing male violence against women?? As the pp said talking about the issue isn’t whipping up hate. Instead of engaging with the topic at hand you’ve focused on deflecting and derailing this discussion right from the outset. Why is that?

Wouldn't it be nice to just be able to acknowledge, show respect and grieve for women who have suffered male violence.

And to question why the majority of women who do suffer male violence are the victims of men they live with or have a relationship with.

Agreed.

I would also question the motive of such a poster and why they are adamant on trying to get a thread shut down.

Some people have very dark souls indeed.

A 68-year-old father accused of drugging his two daughters and systematically raping them for a year has been arrested by Brazilian police.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14691411/Incest-rape-horror-sisters-36-38-tied-beds-squalid-private-prison-house-father-sexually-abused-year.html

It's a bag of shite obviously, OP, but the worrying thing is, it seems to be getting worse. Normalisation.

I've not clicked on any of those links!

I nearly added that to my post. No need to read article.

The headlines says it all.

I suspect acts of violence like this have gone on for years, decades, centuries, and until recently nobody thought it important enough to report.

Joining the party to add a link https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/27/swedens-elder-rape-scandal/. I haven’t been able to read the complete article yet so I don’t know the conclusions.

Two French departments have been accused of failing to keep children in care from falling into prostitution. The French state and individual departments share responsibility for child welfare services, which have been accused for several years of failing in their obligations.

The ASE is administered on the departmental level, and some children – particularly older teenagers – are not put into foster care, but are housed in hotels or shelters, where advocates say they are left with minimal supervision.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/french-child-welfare-accused-allowing-133501776.html

This is exactly what happens in the UK and why so many young girls end up being pimped because social services just leave them to survive in unregulated housing which are mixed sex.

Victims in landmark child abuse trial ask why France doesn't want to know

the trial of France's most prolific known paedophile, Joel Le Scouarnec - a retired surgeon who has admitted in court to raping or sexually assaulting 299 people, almost all of them children - is coming to an end this Wednesday amid widespread frustration.

"I'm exhausted. I'm angry. Right now, I don't have much hope. Society seems totally indifferent. It's frightening to think [the rapes] could happen again," one of Le Scouarnec's victims, Manon Lemoine, 36, told the BBC.

Ms Lemoine and some 50 other victims, stung by an apparent lack of public interest in the trial, have formed their own campaign group to pressure the French authorities, accusing the government of ignoring a "landmark" case which exposed a "true laboratory of institutional failures".

The group has questioned why a parliamentary commission has not been set up, as in other high-profile abuse cases, and spoken of being made to feel "invisible", as if "the sheer number of victims prevented us from being recognised."

Some of the victims, most of whom had initially chosen to testify anonymously, have now decided to reveal their identities in public – even posing for photos on the courthouse steps – in the hope of jolting France into paying more attention and, perhaps, learning lessons about a culture of deference that helped a prestigious surgeon to rape with impunity for decades.

"It's not normal that I should have to show my face. [But] I hope that what we're doing now will change things. That's why we decided to rise up, to make our voices heard," said Ms Lemoine.
So, what has gone wrong?

Were the horrors too extreme, the subject matter too unremittingly grim or simply too uncomfortable to contemplate?

Why, when the whole world knows the name of Dominique and Gisèle Pelicot, has a trial with significantly more victims - child victims abused under the noses of the French medical establishment - passed by with what feels like little more than a collective shudder?

Full article https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvg559zz3d8o

French court hands paedophile surgeon Le Scouarnec 20-year sentence for rape, sexual assault
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250528-french-court-to-rule-on-paedophile-surgeon-le-scouarnec-who-abused-children-for-decases

citation needed**