Which is the safest place for a woman? Not the streets, we have learned after the Nirbhaya case. Neither the workplace – the rape and murder at RG Kar Hospital has surely put paid to that dream. Surely the bedroom? No, not even the bedroom as the Gisele Pelicot case has revealed to the world.
Just last week Gisele’s former husband and 50 other co-accused men were sentenced for drugging and raping her for almost a decade.
The year that has gone by, has been a difficult one, both for women and humanity, in general. The RG Kar hospital murder and rape left us both disgusted and distressed as we realized the path to justice is a long one, full of pitfalls. However, the case of Gisele Pelicot, a French woman has been distressing and strangely liberating. To give brief details of the case, on 2 November 2020 seventy-two-year-old Gisele’s world came crashing down when it was revealed her ex-husband Dominique had for over a decade drugged and raped her and invited more than 70 strangers to their bedroom to do the same to his inert wife, often without a condom and even photographed her.
Ironically, it was the photographs and videos in his possession that helped the French police to identify the 50 co-accused men.
Dominique, a retired electrician was caught by a hawk-eyed supermarket security personnel upskirting women and handed over to the police. It was the police psychiatrist who alerted that something was amiss which led to the confiscation of his phone. Eventually, his whole cache of photographs on his home computer was discovered. Now, he has been identified as the aggressor in the rape attempt on an estate agent after a DNA match and is being investigated for a cold case of another rape and murder of a young estate agent in the 1990s because of striking similarities between the two cases. Gisele, a grandmother to seven grandchildren was devastated when she learned Dominique whom she loved and married, had routinely laced her food and drinks with drugs to knock her out, then raped her or invited others to abuse her.
But she then rose from being a victim to a beacon of hope for women who have been violated, abused, and left traumatized.
Gisele waived her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual abuse and successfully pushed for the evidence including the video recordings of the rapes be heard in open court. She courageously endured sitting in the same courtroom for more than three months while the trial went on, with the same men who violated her. Gisele said she wanted all of society to witness what she went through and support all those victims whose stories remain untold. She insisted the shame was not hers but that of her abusers who included firefighters, lorry drivers, soldiers, construction workers, and even a journalist.
What was more aberrational was that many of her abusers did not consider their act as rape, arguing the presence of her husband made it consensual and others claimed they did not notice she was lying inert.
Following the verdict in the mass rape trial which found all 51 people guilty and sentenced Gisele said she did not regret her decision to push for an open trial, allowing the press and public. She wanted to send a message to other victims of sexual assault that they were not alone. No wonder through her ordeal Gisele Pelicot has become an icon for women in France and everywhere. She had been able to coin a new phrase for women, “Shame must change sides.”
In India, in both cases of Nirbhaya and Abhaya, women in general, publicly questioned the Supreme Court’s directive on protecting the anonymity of rape victims to save them from further embarrassment and social stigma.
The newly drawn-up Bharatiya Nyay Samhita also explicitly forbids it. However, maybe it is time to take a relook at this directive, particularly because in our country rapists behave with impunity, routinely flout bail conditions and terrorize the victims and their families to the extent of killing them. Hence, the anonymity does not protect the victim, it rather emboldens the rapists who can shame the victim into silence. As I said Gisele Pelicot has certainly given a lot of food for thought as to how we perceive criminals committing sexual crimes and their victims.
Her courage and composure have forced to shift the shame, often associated with sexual abuse, from the victim to the perpetrator. We too join her supporters to say, “Merci, Gisele!”
In the context of India, our judicial system does not recognize marital rape. The government also has resisted criminalizing marital rape, opposing petitions to amend existing law on the ground that criminalizing marital rape will harshly impact the institution of marriage. The archaic and patriarchal notion that a woman’s consent is granted once she enters matrimony, needs to be relooked and reassessed.
However, one can hope the Pelicot case will force their lordships and the powers to sit up and take notice.
By Anindita Chowdhury
Anindita Chowdhury is a special correspondent of the English daily, The Statesman. She is based in Hyderabad. Apart from reporting, she writes short stories and essays with special focus on history, particularly the social and cultural aspects of the bygone era. She can be contacted at aninditasmail@gmail.com.
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