THE PELICOT RAPES: A NEW FORM OF PERVERSION

We must begin by recognizing that Dominique – the manipulative master of Gisele – is not a strong man but a weakling incapable of openly asserting his power.

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The Pelicot rapes deservedly caught public attention – here are the basic facts. Over a period of nine years, from July 2011 to October 2020, Dominique Pelicot, a man from Mazan in southeastern France, repeatedly drugged his wife, Gisele, raped her, and invited strangers to rape her while she was unconscious. Gisele, who was unaware of the abuse being perpetrated against her, was raped 92 times by 72 men while her husband filmed them. When questioned by police about her sex life, she stated that she had never participated in wife-swapping or threesomes. She was shown a photograph but did not recognize the sleeping woman or the man raping her. It was only when shown further images that she recognized herself. She later testified that she had asked the police officer to stop showing her the images: "It was unbearable. I was inert, in my bed, and a man was raping me. My world fell apart.”

Her world fell apart because, until that moment, she fully trusted her husband and believed she lived in a happy marriage:

“It is difficult for me to listen to this. For 50 years, I lived with a man who I would have never imagined could be capable of this. I trusted him completely."

The shocking implication of this statement is that when Dominique refused to accept the harm he had done, he was in some bizarre sense correct: the trial had "destroyed his life," and if he hadn't been arrested, he "would still be happy, and she too – everything would have continued the same way." It is crucial to fully confront this disturbing fact and not attempt to explain it away.

The dilemma here is: what was Dominique’s real intention? Was it to continue living happily as he did or to eventually make Gisele aware of what was happening to her without her knowledge and thereby shatter her world? The second option aligns with the standard notion of sadism (the sadist wants their victim to become aware of their horrible predicament and thus have their world ruined, potentially leading them to die of shame). However, the first option is far more unsettling: Dominique wanted to create a radical division in Gisele’s life – between her normal daily existence as a happily married woman and her brutal mistreatment when she was drugged and unaware of herself. It is incredible how, for so many years, these two domains were successfully kept separate. It seems likely that Dominique’s goal was this division – simply to perpetuate it. (One cannot know if he also compartmentalized his own life; my presumption is that he did not.)