Gisèle Pelicot was raped by strangers for ten years. Unconscious, she does not remember it: her husband, who has been on trial since September 2 before the Vaucluse criminal court, alongside 50 other men, is accused of having drugged her without her knowledge with an anxiolytic and a sleeping pill.
“I am not testifying for myself, but for all those women who are subjected to chemical submission.” When Gisèle Pelicot took the floor on September 5 at the trial of her husband and 50 men accused of raping her between 2011 and 2020, while she was drugged and unconscious, the septuagenarian wanted to address the victims of chemical submission, that is to say the administration of psychoactive substances for criminal purposes, without their knowledge or under threat.The day a woman wakes up and doesn’t remember what she did the day before, she’ll say to herself: ‘Look, I heard Madame Pelicot’s testimony.'”she said, in front of the criminal court of Vaucluse.
A message in the form of an alert to prevent her ordeal from happening again. Because Gisèle Pelicot, she, never made the connection between her health problems, chemical submission and the rapes, since she was in a deep sleep, close to a coma, at the time of the events. Nor did her entourage or the doctors she consulted. A few hours before the rapes, her husband, Dominique Pelicot, had taken the habit of hiding Temesta pills, a powerful anxiolytic, in her food in order to put her to sleep. Analysis of her hair also revealed the ingestion of a sleeping pill, for at least a year.
Due to these drug dosages, “every three weeks or so”, Gisele Pelicot suffered from memory lapses, sometimes lasting for 48 hours. Disoriented, she spoke incoherently. “His absences would have started on November 27, 2010,” the forensic expert said at the hearing. “The disturbances only happened on weekends. I didn’t understand why I was sleeping so much.”confided the victim to the expert. They multiply in 2013, when she leaves the Paris region with her husband, to live a retirement that she thought would be peaceful, under the sun of Mazan, a village at the foot of Mont-Ventoux. But in the years that follow, her friends and family find her “very tired and thin” and fear the onset of Alzheimer’s.
In 2017, faced with her children’s insistence, Gisèle Pelicot consulted a neurologist in Carpentras. The specialist then spoke “of an amnesic stroke which is similar to a kind of black hole, a loss of memory without after-effects”, writes his daughter, Caroline Darian, in a diary-style book about the affair, entitled And I stopped calling you dad (Editions JC Lattès). The septuagenarian also undergoes a brain scan, “without result”. One of her two sons remembers a dinner where she “staring into space” and goes to bed in the middle of a meal. “In 2019, Mom went back to see another neurologist in Cavaillon who put it down to anxiety.”relates Caroline Darian. An immense form of anxiety in which she remained for almost a decade. In her expert report, the coroner estimated that the ingestion of high doses of medication made her run “a vital risk, with endangerment of herself and others”especially when she was driving.
Why never suspected chemical submission? This extraordinary case is impossible to conceive and the victim herself did not suspect anything, agree the health professionals interviewed by franceinfo. “It involves thinking the unthinkable,” observes Lucie Bosméan, a general practitioner in Isère, specializing in domestic violence. “Spotting violence is not easy, but there are warning points”recognizes the practitioner.
“When a body expresses resistant or recurring symptoms, the caregiver must look further. If the symptoms remain unexplained, the question must be asked: ‘What’s wrong?'”
Lucie Bosméan, general practitionerto franceinfo
But in the eyes of Lucie Bosméan, this reflex requires “a deeper look and experience”, Above all for a treating physician, “at the crossroads of all other specialties”. “It is necessary take the time to summarize the entire medical history, including consultations outside our office”This which is difficult according to her, in a “fragmented and strained health system” for years.
In order to improve the detection of domestic violence, including the most unsuspected, as well as the support of victims, Lucie Bosméan, who has been a graduate for four years, trains health professionals of all ages. She notes generational differences: “Young caregivers know that this violence is a health problem but do not know how to proceed. It is harder for those who have a lot of experience but who are trained late. They are often horrified and say to themselves: ‘I have seen so many patients go through it, I have not seen anything’…” But for the doctor, this “stage of awareness” East “primordial”. It doesn’t matter at what point in a career it occurs. And it is only since 2019 that the High Authority for Health has recommended to professionals “to ask all their patients if they are experiencing or have experienced violence in the past, even in the absence of warning signs.”
“To detect chemical submission, you have to know that it exists. Hence the importance of training caregivers, so that they direct victims to the right people to talk to.” adds Leïla Chaouachi, a pharmacist at the Paris addiction monitoring center, a trainer, and who launched the #Mendorspas campaign with Caroline Darian to combat chemical submission. An expert with the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines (ANSM), she has led an annual study conducted since 2003 on the scale of the phenomenon in France. The latest, published on September 6, lists 1,229 suspicious reports, 97 likely chemical submissions, 786 possible ones and 346 chemical vulnerabilities in 2022.
“In one out of two cases, the victim has amnesia of the facts, but with signs indicating an assault: she wakes up naked in the street, or in a messy apartment, with no memories. She thinks about chemical submission, so the caregivers don’t have to do any detection work.”explains Leïla Chaouachi. The expert continues: “There remain complex cases, like that of Gisèle Pelicot, with recurring symptoms without signs of aggression. There are no specific signals to identify chemical submission, only suggestive disorders, for example dizziness.” Leïla Chaouachi details, in training, all possible cases, including chemical abuse of children or the elderly. To go beyond the image of GHB poured into a drink in a nightclub.
Although the fight against chemical submission is the subject of a government mission, access to toxicological sampling remains very difficult, regrets Sophie Tellier, head of the Center for Orientation, Research and Legal Assistance in the Face of Sexual Offenses (Coralis) at the Maison des femmes in Saint-Denis. Most often, urine and blood must be analyzed within 48 hours after ingestion. “After this period, you have to wait two months to take a hair sample for toxicological research, which consists of analyzing three strands the size of a pencil,” she points out. They can only be analyzed at the request of the judicial authorities and only by expert laboratories. The cost is high: around 1,000 euros. Few structures, such as the Maison des femmes in Saint-Denis, initiate the process without filing a complaint, a prerequisite for accessing these forensic samples and an express condition for being reimbursed.
“In any case, victims must have a suspicionrecalls Sophie Tellier. Which was not the case for Gisèle Pelicot. Hence the importance of screening for all forms of violence in the family sphere.”
“You don’t become violent through chemical submission. Other forms of violence must have existed beforehand.”
Sophie Tellier, from the Women’s House of Saint-Denisto franceinfo
In fact, Caroline Darian relates in her book that she was “witness” of a “scene of domestic violence” between her parents, at the age of about 9. She also evokes the “gynecological problems” from his mother. Gisèle Pelicot had consulted twice for unexplained pain. “The doctor had not detected anything in particular and had given her an antifungal treatment for several days. In fact, her cervix was very inflamed,” writes Caroline Darian. Not enough to draw a conclusion: the causes of such inflammation are numerous, explains Joëlle Belaïsch-Allart, president of the National College of French Gynecologists and Obstetricians, who does not wish to comment further without knowing Gisèle Pelicot’s medical file. The victim learned, shortly after the revelation of the facts, that she suffered from four sexually transmitted infections.
Another point revealed by the investigation: Dominique Pelicot systematically accompanied his wife during consultations on her unexplained absences. omnipresence that raises questions. Should we see this as a warning signal? For her part, Dr. Joëlle Belaïsch-Allart says “favorable” in the presence of the spouse, “if the patient wishes”. On the contrary, Emmanuelle Piet, a maternal and child protection doctor and gynecologist, considers that receiving a couple is “a professional fault, because we cannot share the consultation”. “Doctors must stop thinking that the man has the right to know everything about his wife. It is an old archaism”, protests the doctor, founder of the Feminist Collective Against Rape.
“It is also difficult for patients who are under its influence to accept it.”underlines Christine Louis-Vahdat, obstetrician-gynecologist and referent on ethical questions at the Council of the Order of Physicians. “The practitioner could help him, if he had the possibility,” she adds. To compensate for this lack, she welcomes the arrival of a “teleconsultation platform”, called “Crafs” (Reference Center for Substance-Facilitated Aggression) which, “allows the doctor to geolocate all the resources around him to address the right places”The application, which will be released in October, was developed by expert Leïla Chaouachi. She insists: “A single health professional cannot do everything. The fight against chemical submission must be collective and take place at all levels, including at the citizen level.”
Women who are victims of violence can contact 3919, a free and anonymous telephone number. This listening, information and guidance platform is accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week. This number guarantees the anonymity of individuals, but is not an emergency number like 17, which allows you to call the police or gendarmerie in the event of immediate danger.