They are, on the face of it, the most ordinary of men. Yet they’re all on trial charged with rape.
Fathers, grandfathers, husbands, workers and retirees — 50 in all — accused of taking turns on the drugged and inert body of Gisèle Pelicot while her husband recorded the horror for his swelling private video library.
The harrowing and unprecedented trial in France is exposing how pornography, chatrooms and men’s disdain for or hazy understanding of consent is fueling rape culture. The horror isn’t simply that Dominique Pelicot, in his own words, arranged for men to rape his wife, it’s that he also had no difficulty finding dozens of them to take part.
Among the nearly two dozen defendants who testified during the trial’s first seven weeks was Ahmed T. — French defendants’ full last names are generally withheld until conviction. The married plumber with three kids and five grandchildren said he wasn’t particularly alarmed that Pelicot wasn’t moving when he visited her and her now-ex-husband’s house in the small Provence town of Mazan in 2019.
It reminded him of porn he had watched featuring women who “pretend to be asleep and don’t react,” he said.
Like him, many other defendants told the court that they couldn’t have imagined that Dominique Pelicot was drugging his wife, and that they were told she was a willing participant acting out a kinky fantasy. Dominique Pelicot denied this, telling the court his co-defendants knew exactly what the situation was.