It is difficult to read about this sordid case of the Mazan rapes without being stunned. For a decade, Dominique Pélicot offered his wife as fodder to men he recruited online. His appearance with 50 co-defendants before the Vaucluse criminal court shook France by shining the spotlight on a phenomenon that is little known there as it is here: chemical submission as a weapon of rape in bedrooms.
Facing them, Gisèle Pélicot wanted to testify with her face uncovered so that “shame changes sides”. She is there for all those who are likely to fall in turn into the insidious trap of chemical submission. Let there be no mistake. If these serial abuses are out of the ordinary by their well-oiled mechanics and their scale, they are the expression of an evil that other aggressors allow themselves on an individual basis, protected by our inability to see the phenomenon in all its extent and complexity.
Here, there was no predator running through the woods, streets or bars looking for strangers to attack in the indignity of an alley or a seedy hotel room. In Mazan, the worst lurked between the lines of fifty years of ordinary life together. “Harmonious” even, Gisèle Pélicot would tell the investigators who had brought her in for, she believed at the time, a trivial case of voyeurism.
It was before their eyes that she discovered herself naked, inert, delivered as if dead to the assaults of her husband and men she did not know in her own home. The investigators recorded 92 rapes under chemical submission between July 2011 and October 2020. They combed through 20,000 photos and videos catalogued by the septuagenarian — including photos of his own daughter and two stepdaughters taken without their knowledge during family gatherings. The exercise made it possible to identify 50 men among the dozens who responded positively to his invitation launched under the heading “Without his knowledge” on the Coco.fr website (since closed).
Of the lot, only one admitted his wrongdoing and apologized. The defenses of the others are divided between “misunderstood libertinism”, “involuntary rape” or “consent by delegation”. It will be up to the courts to decide, but it is surprising that none of them spotted the slightest warning sign in their exchanges with the husband. In his unequivocal turns of phrase (“You are like me, you like rape mode”), his dehumanizing language (“the slut”) and the litany of conditions to be respected in order not to leave any trace of their common crime (no perfume, no cigarettes, etc.).
We read everywhere that these men of a distressing banality have for the most part profiles without history. That they are our fathers, our brothers, our sons, our friends, our colleagues. What we do not read enough is that Gisèle Pélicot was also a woman without history. That she is at the same time our mother, our sisters, our daughters, our friends, our accomplices. And that by treating her in this way, these men remind women that they too can become victims to give and take.
The other striking element is how poorly equipped the health sector is to detect, prevent and treat these attacks. For years, Gisèle Pélicot suffered from unexplained gynecological problems, absences, memory problems and chronic fatigue. The revelation of rapes under chemical submission, of which these are common symptoms, put an end to her “therapeutic wandering” to open up to a reconstruction that promises to be long and painful.
Like the health sector, the prevention sector also has some catching up to do. The CAQ government was right last year to step up its approaches to combat GHB poisoning in bars and parties. The same must be done for poisonings with anxiolytics, which take place in more intimate contexts, in the cocoon of the private sphere.
As with every rape case that is publicized, we also notice that the hashtag #NotAllMen has gained momentum on social networks. True, Dominique Pélicot and his co-accused are not all men. Far from it. But all of us, men and women, have an examination of conscience to do and a word to say.
In the pages of Release On Saturday, author Lola Lafon pointed out that the most terrifying thing about the Mazan rapes is that they demonstrate that “while not all men are rapists, rapists can apparently be any man.” However, the case also allowed us to measure the thickness of the leaden blanket that weighs on these transgressions often perceived as simple “domestic stewardship.”
Among those who doubted the validity of the husband’s indecent proposals – because there were several, as we now know thanks to the investigation – none saw fit to bring the matter before the competent authorities. Ultimately, this is perhaps what remains most disturbing in this whole story: the maintenance of a culture of silence which, once again, serves as a screen for the executioners.