Dear Gisèle Pélicot, you've entered our lives like you entered the Avignon court, through the front door. You didn't want to shy away. You walked straight, head held high. You were neatly dressed, with a slim figure, summer dress and impeccable hair. Your eyes were hidden by dark glasses that you were just about to take off. A little lost, a little like you were floating in the center of a level of attention that is too big for you. It was a circus all around you. The pack of journalists was kept at bay by your lawyers.
You defended him, this man with whom you lived your life and raised your children, before you learned that he had been drugging you and inviting anyone who wanted to rape you. A good father, a nice guy, even a great guy, you had said. Your daughter Caroline has stopped calling him "dad," as she wrote on the cover of her book. She recounts the explosion, the lie's ravages on the family, the anguish, the anger, the ashes of the past and the pain that batters. She was there, with her brothers and her unanswered questions. Their love escorted you.
The day your rapists went on trial was also the day your divorce became official. Another pack awaited you in the courtroom: The 50 men on trial for gang rape. There are dozens more that were not able to be identified. You face them. Nothing could prepare you for this courtroom. One of the defendants arrived late because, he said, he had to accompany his son to school for the start of the new school year. I wondered who accompanied your grandchildren, who were also going back to school. I know you were thinking of them at the time.
A hard reality to accept
You were seeing all these men for the first time, except for the neighbor, whom you used to bump into, in the life you used to lead, the life that will never return, the life in the house in southeast France and the life of unspoiled ignorance. You looked at them. They were looking at their feet. They'd never seen your eyes, Vincent, Patrick, Paul, Jean, Didier, Jean-Luc, Romain, Redouan, Cédric, Grégory, Karim, Jean-Marc, Philippe, Quentin, Nicolas, etc. The length of the list and the banality of their backgrounds was astounding. Three quarters of them didn't admit to rapes, just like all those who make news headlines, the men like PPDA, Nicolas Hulot, Salim Berrada, Gérard Miller, Olivier Duhamel, Benoît Jacquot, Jacques Doillon, Gérard Depardieu, etc.
Their arguments are always the same. They play the vile broken record of self-indulgent lies. They hadn't understood what they were doing. They, too, are sure they're nice guys, not monsters, even when they're shown the videos of the crimes. They are firefighters, journalists, students, truck drivers, prison guards, nurses, pensioners, municipal councilors, our friends, our lovers, our fathers, our brothers. A reality that is difficult to accept.
You have 46.8% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.