“The Trial of Gisèle Pelicot’s Rapists United France and Fractured Her Family”
Note: For more context, see, e.g., Pelicot rape case on Wikipedia and the NYT interview.
“Keep going, hanging on, putting on a brave face was all I knew how to do, and it was what I wished for my daughter too,” Gisèle recalled. But Caroline found her mother’s approach alienating—a “protection mechanism for her,” she wrote later, “but one I won’t be able to tolerate.”
Two psychiatrists reasoned that Dominique’s crimes were possible because he was “splitting.” “This split allows two contradictory personalities to coexist without conflict,” one wrote. “When M. Pelicot operates in one mode, he is unaware of the other.” The second psychiatrist proposed that Gisèle had not sensed Dominique’s other side because “we split with the splitter, so to speak.” We cordon off the parts of our lives that don’t fit the story we believe we are living.
Trauma often leaves people feeling like spectators to the harms done to them, but for Gisèle, who had been unconscious, her trauma occupied an even more elusive category of experience. She knew that there were videos of her being raped, but she didn’t want to construct new memories by watching them.
Nearly all the other defendants denied committing a crime. “As long as the man is there, giving me instructions, it’s not rape,” a construction supervisor said. A truck driver proposed that “once a woman is wet, it means she’s not saying no.” A gardener explained that he had penetrated Gisèle “out of politeness, to reciprocate the hospitality of the host.” While the defendants shirked responsibility, some of their wives tried to take the blame. One woman said that, owing to a complicated pregnancy, she’d refused to have sex with her husband. “The tragedy must have occurred at that time,” she offered.
Perhaps there had always been some disagreement about the terms of that contract [of motherhood]—Caroline, whose emotions had always been close to the surface, wanted a kind of nurturing that Gisèle couldn’t readily give. Such tension may be enough to doom any relationship, but, after the revelation of Dominique’s crimes, it took on new weight, as if two versions of feminism were clashing. Instead of being there for maternal consolation, ready to believe and affirm, Gisèle prioritized her own emotional integrity, becoming a triumphant figure of reclaimed agency for the world.
When the trial began, Gisèle appeared to be a well-groomed, tasteful older lady. Now she had the bearing of a movie star. She wore tall, sleek, black leather boots, a checkered skirt, and two gold necklaces of different lengths. She sat very still and answered all my questions graciously, at a remove. At one point, she remarked, “I think anger and hatred destroy everything. I prefer to remain dignified and keep my distance. That’s just the way I am, really.”
I found the phrase “living her best life” sneaking, confusingly, into my head. What has a century of psychological theory taught us if not to be suspicious of happiness in the wake of trauma? But all those theories now seemed sort of miserly.