In an ugly concrete courthouse in Avignon, a short walk from the splendour of the 14th-century Palace of the Popes, a legal case is under way that seems straight out of a horror film, reports The Sunday Times.
Dominique Pélicot, 71, a white-haired grandfather, stands accused of repeatedly drugging his wife, Gisèle, 72, during at least ten of their 50 years of marriage, and enlisting more than 80 men online to rape her as she lay unconscious in her own bed in the family home.
In its sheer horror and scale, the case stands apart from the countless sex and rape scandals that have erupted in France in recent years in the aftermath of the MeToo movement, which has forced a belated re-examination of relations between the sexes. The couple’s daughter, Caroline Peyronnet, 45, has called her father “one of the worst sexual predators of the last 20 years”
But the involvement of so many other men — 50 of whom are on trial alongside Pélicot — raises disturbing questions about quite how far that reckoning has gone. So, too, does the treatment of the case by France’s leading newspapers, which have largely tucked away the grim proceedings on their inside pages.
The country’s politicians have also been uncharacteristically quiet: almost alone in speaking out is Sandrine Josso, 48, an MP who last year accused a fellow parliamentarian of spiking her champagne with ecstasy at his home to sexually assault her. Her alleged assailant, Joël Guerriau, 66, a senator, has since been charged, but denies any wrongdoing.
Such silence seems strangely at odds with the massive attention paid by French media to recent high-profile cases involving accusations of rape against Gérard Depardieu, 75, the actor, and Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, 76, a prominent former television anchor (which both men also deny).