One of France’s most influential rape survivors, Gisèle Pelicot, was recently awarded justice for the abhorrent crimes she endured, but her indescribable suffering has kickstarted something much bigger.
Ms Pelicot’s ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, was found guilty of continuously drugging and raping his wife, and inviting dozens of strangers to abuse her while she lay unconscious. Filming his crimes whilst he committed them, Mr Pelicot’s devices were seized by police and thousands of videos were found; 200 of them evidencing rape. With such overarching proof, it left Mr Pelicot with no choice but to admit to his charges, but I believe the true injustice in this case lies elsewhere: within the defence arguments of the fifty other men involved. The majority of the invited strangers testified in court that they believed they were taking part in a sexual fetish between Mr and Ms Pelicot, meaning they possessed no intention to rape.
The French Penal Code currently defines rape as “any act of sexual penetration of any kind whatsoever, or any oral-genital act committed…by violence, coercion, threat, or surprise.”
This requirement of intention left many of the fifty men with an opportunity to argue that they did not outright intend to rape Ms Pelicot, and therefore could not be charged.
Additionally, the absence of a consent provision within French law meant that Ms Pelicot’s unconsciousness (and inability to provide consent) could not be viewed as an aggravating factor and enable these incidents to be automatically named as rapes. Although all of the fifty men involved were found guilty of at least one charge relating to a sexual offence, the very raising of such an argument calls into question the constitutionality of French rape law itself.
Consent in sexual relations is sacrosanct. Liberal legal and feminist theories have jointly shaped much of our contemporary understanding of how the law interprets sex today. The line between consensual and non-consensual sex has been blurred, meaning that in many cases, the law is failing to criminalise nonconsensual sex or even reference consent at all. The belief that consent in marital relationships is assumed or ‘a given’ remains one of the key issues that the Pelicot case has helped bring to a forefront. The belief that rape cannot occur within marriage is both outdated and factually incorrect. In UK law, Section 1(b) and (c) of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 states that a person is guilty of rape if there was no consent to the penetration and if there was no reasonable belief (at that time) that consent had been given. The UK therefore criminalises non-consensual sex. This would mean that in Ms Pelicot’s unconscious state, her inability to provide consent each time she was penetrated would make each of those penetrations automatically an act of rape, leaving the defences of the fifty men completely futile. Additionally, this requirement of consent does not terminate once a relationship becomes bound by matrimony, which is why Dominique Pelicot was also found guilty of raping his own wife. French law’s lack of a definitive consent element simply makes it that much harder for abused women to seek the justice they deserve.
The purpose of the law is to protect, and the fact that many substantive law reforms only occur after there has been some tragic breach of it can somewhat give effect to ‘too little too late.’
The awarding of justice to Ms Pelicot in this case has not only inspired change within France, but a wave of activism has transcended across European borders. Despite years of feminist struggle, few European countries had implemented consent-based provisions into their laws until very recently, with some yet to even do so. There has been a prolonged, substantive debate on whether the introduction of stricter, more regulated rape law across the EU is seen as a European prerogative. At the European Union level, rape is currently not listed among the serious offences of Article 83.1 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. French President Emmanuel Macron later clarified that while he supported the redefining of French law in light of the Pelicot case, he was unconvinced that the issue met the status of a European prerogative.
The fact that the horrific sexual crime of rape is not viewed as meeting this ‘seriousness’ threshold is a dishonour to the millions of women and men whose lives have been changed by it.
Gisèle Pelicot’s suffering was despicable, but she is only one in a million.
With such importance being placed on bodily autonomy in the twenty-first century, it is unclear as to why this importance has not reached the sphere of rape and challenged its culture. Consent is about granting women the control over their own sexual encounters, and creating a sense of sexual security for women both in and outside of marriage. I truly believe that its importance should never be disregarded, and instead should be made a focal point in jurisdictions all over the world when prosecuting sexual crimes. France’s previous lacklustre attempts at incorporating consent into their rape law is arguably what failed to protect Ms Pelicot in the first place, and consequently, the millions of other women who have, up to now and continue to be, suffering in silence.
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