“I bow to Gisèle Pelicot. With her courage and strength, she is fundamentally changing the way we look at perpetrators and victims of sexual violence. She insisted and ultimately enforced that the trial against her rapists be held publicly. Footage of the shocking acts of their tormentors was shown publicly, so that the focus was on the perpetrators and their brutal acts. This has initiated a paradigm shift: Shame has actually changed sides,” says Meri Disoski, women’s spokesperson for the Green Party, on the occasion of today’s verdict in the Pelicot trial.
For almost ten years, French woman Gisèle Pelicot was raped by her husband and strange men while she was unconscious. Dominique Pelicot offered his wife Gisèle to other men to rape on the Internet.
“The shocking brutality with which Dominique Pelicot offered other men Gisèle Pelicot to rape on the Internet and the fact that at least 74 men took advantage of this offer and raped Ms. Pelicot shows us how pervasive and trivialized sexual violence against women is still is. It is all the more important that these men had to stand trial. “Today’s guilty verdicts against Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men who were identified underscore the fact that there is no tolerance for violence against women in a constitutional state,” says Disoski.
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