WOMEN'S RIGHTS ACTIVIST BLANdine Deverlanges wants to be in court to support Gisèle Pélicot as much as she can, but often the testimony in the rape trial implicating dozens of men is too much.
"Sometimes it is really unbearable, so I cannot go every day," said Deverlanges, founder of Les Amazones d'Avignon, a group whose members have protested outside Vaucluse criminal court since the case against Pélicot's husband Dominique and 50 other men started on September 2.
"I felt sick," Deverlanges told Newsweek in describing the first time she heard details of how the retired electrician allegedly drugged his wife and recruited accomplices in an online chatroom to sexually violate her while it was being filmed.
"During the hearing I cry and the women around me, you see tears on their faces—it is so inhuman. This woman has been a victim of such monstrosity that we feel compassion and anger and everything is mixed," she said. "You feel so disgusted."
Gisèle Pélicot arrives at the courthouse of Avignon on September 17, 2024 during the trial of her former husband Dominique Pélicot. He is accused of drugging her for nearly 10 years and inviting strangers to... CHRISTOPHE SIMON/AFP via Getty Images
Gisèle Pélicot, 72, has won praise for waiving her anonymity and walking defiantly into the Avignon courtroom every day, sometimes behind the men accused of raping her.
On September 17, she heard her husband of five decades admit: "I am a rapist like the others in this room."
The range of professions and ages of the accused reflects a snapshot of different generations and a cross-section of working and middle-class rural France. The youngest is 26, the oldest 74, and they include truck drivers, members of the military, a nurse and a journalist. The modus operandi of the accused combined with the everyday nature of their occupations have tested public comprehension.
Esta historia es de la edición October 18, 2024 de Newsweek Europe.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor ? Conectar
Esta historia es de la edición October 18, 2024 de Newsweek Europe.
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 9,000 revistas y periódicos.
Ya eres suscriptor? Conectar
Falling for Romance
A new book, Nora Ephron at the Movies, celebrates the writer/director best known for her iconic rom-coms and strong female characters
Cracking the Norse Code
Walrus DNA has shown that Vikings were likely the first to have encountered Indigenous North Americans
Monumental Shift
The discovery of 165-million-year-old crystals Easter Island has upended the longheld notion of how the Earth's \"conveyor belt\" moves
'OUR FOREIGN POLICY AND DOMESTIC REFORMS ARE TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN'
It is a well-known fact across the globe that the North Korean regime is irrational and unpredictable, but we have been consistent in strengthening our defense posture against the threat from North Korea since the Korean War, and I believe that their conventional capability is much inferior to that of the Korean military.
'They Read My Eulogy As I Lay in an Open Grave'
Like Paris Hilton, Natasia Pelowski claims she was subjected to abuse at a teenage therapy program
Russian Economy Faces 'Burnout'
Vladimir Putin admits difficulties” as the country’s key interest rate reaches a historic high
China's 'Silent Chemical War'
The U.S. must investigate Beijing's role in the manufacturing of fentanyl that is killing Americans, says one mom whose daughter died after accidentally taking the illicit substance
HARSH HEADWINDS
President Yoon Suk Yeol's BATTLE to reform a South Korea beset with structural problems under the specter of an increasingly aggressive neighbor to THE NORTH
Bridget Everett
BRIDGET EVERETT NEVER THOUGHT SHE'D BE THE LEAD OF A TV SHOW. \"I come from the downtown world in New York, a cabaret singer, and these things just don't happen, you don't find yourself with three seasons of HBO.
Amber Ruffin
A LATE-NIGHT COMEDY SHOW ON CNN? YES, and it's a game show, too.
