By Lori Perkins
Not quite the topic you might expect on a blog titled RomanceDailyNews, since this story is the antithesis of romance.
In case you have been living under a rock, 71-year-old Gisele Pelicot, a suburban wife in the French countryside, was called in to the local police station because her husband was accused of taking up-skirt photos of women in a grocery store. She forgave him when he said it was due to “uncontrollable urges,” since she said they had a good marriage that had produced three children and seven grandchildren.
She was called to the police station again two years later and was shocked to learn that her husband of more than 40 years – whom she had been with faithfully since she was 18 - had drugged her almost nighty and advertised on a dark web that translated to “without her knowledge” for strange men to come to her home and rape her. Her husband had kept meticulous records and videos, which the police showed her. There were 90 men in total, from the ages of 24 to 76, one of whom was a neighbor whom she recognized.
When she learned of what she had endured for nearly a decade by the man she had thought loved her, she packed two suitcases and moved out, beginning divorce proceedings.
Four years later, she has agreed to a public trial, so that the 51 men identified and her ex-husband can be brought to shame and justice. She had the choice to remain anonymous and not testify, but she chose to reveal her ordeal to the world to warn other women.
WE ARE WARNED.
The website where men gathered to share their rape fantasies and realities was shut down, but we all need to know that these men are out there, not just in France but everywhere.
Earlier this month there was a story about three real estate brothers in New York who had been drugging and raping women for over a decade, going back as far as their high school days. One of Supreme Court Justice Kavanagh’s accusers said he was part of a group that drugged and raped women regularly.
And on top of this horrific revelation of the drugged rape of his wife by 90 strangers for nearly a decade, Gisele Pelicot’s husband has also been accused of a rape and murder in 1999 and an attempted rape years before, through DNA matches . I cannot understand how this man’s behavior went unnoticed for all these years.
People ask what did the #MeToo movement change? I believe it gave this heroic woman the courage to publicly shame her attackers. At her trial she said, “Shame needs to change sides.” What an amazing woman!
Comentários