Gisèle Pelicot Is Extraordinary

Greetings, Meteor readers,

This Saturday marks the hibernal/winter solstice, making it the shortest day of the year. Not to get all woo-woo on y’all, but it is a great time to do a little gratitude practice and set your intentions for the upcoming season. So have a feast, take a nice hike, brew some mulled cider in your cauldron, and look inward.

In today’s newsletter, we consider the outcome of France’s horrifying rape case. Plus weekend reading, and if you haven’t checked it out already, another chance to fill out our reader survey!

Bracing for the cold,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

Gisèle Pelicot and the “unrecognized” victims: Today, the final verdicts came down in France’s Pelicot rape case. A brief and brutal synopsis: Over the course of ten years, Gisèle Pelicot was drugged and raped by a man she’d been married to for five decades, Dominique Pelicot, along with dozens of men whom he invited into their shared home to rape her while she was unconscious. He also filmed and took pictures of the assaults. In total, 51 men, Dominique included, were convicted of rape, attempted rape, or aggravated sexual assault, with prison sentences ranging from three to 20 years.

Throughout all of this, Gisèle Pelicot has been vocal about having her story told and shifting the sense of shame from victims to perpetrators. She waived her right to anonymity and welcomed the press into the courtroom—both of which surprised many, given the horrific nature of the case. “By making this trial public from Sept. 2, I wanted for society to be able to take up the debates that followed,” Pelicot told the French press. “I have never regretted that decision.”

SUPPORTERS OUTSIDE OF THE COURTHOUSE WHERE THE TRIAL WAS HELD. ONE MAN HOLDS A SIGN THAT READS “THANK YOU FOR YOUR COURAGE GISÈLE PELICOT. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

Those debates are numerous. What could justice look like in this situation? Will anything be done to address faulty policy and rape culture in (and outside) France? Could no one have intervened earlier, while the men were planning their attacks online or when Gisèle Pelicot went to various doctors for mysterious symptoms? These are crucial questions, and don’t stop mattering with this verdict; lawmakers and reporters should keep following them even once the hero at the center of this trial recedes into her well-deserved privacy.

And there’s another question we cannot avoid revisiting: What kinds of victims deserve support?

Ideally, the answer should be all victims. In her remarks after the verdict, Pelicot herself acknowledged this: “I think of the victims, unrecognized, whose stories often remain hidden,” she said.

But many women who come forward are ignored, belittled, publicly mocked, blamed, and shamed back into silence. Pelicot has been rightly lauded as a hero for pursuing a criminal case against these men—but she, of course, ticks all the boxes of what we expect a “good woman” to be. She is a loving mother and grandmother, she’s older (a nice word the media uses to imply “not sexy or enticing to attackers”), and her trial had the golden egg of evidence: video recordings. We still live in a society that in its deepest heart believes that “good women” should not be raped and that those who are were probably asking for it.

As Pelicot repeatedly reminded us: The only person to shame and blame for a rape, is the rapist—point blank period.

AND:

• Yesterday, the Senate approved a $895 billion defense bill that, if  signed, “would be the first time in nearly three decades that the United States has codified an explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ policy into federal law,” The Intercept notes. What does defense spending have to do with anti-LGBTQ+ policy? The bill would ban military insurance from covering gender-affirming care treatments for children of the insured. Advocates are asking that President Biden veto the bill when it hits his desk—likely tomorrow—and “make good on his promise to protect LGBTQ+ Americans.”

• Fani Willis, the Georgia district attorney who was planning to try Donald Trump (and others) for trying to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results, has been disqualified from the case by the Georgia Court of Appeals for an alleged conflict of interest. Willis had a past romantic relationship with the special prosecutor on the case, Nathan Wade. Although “an appearance of impropriety generally is not enough to support disqualification,” the court wrote, this is a “rare case” in which disqualification is necessary “to restore public confidence in the integrity of these proceedings.” (The people of Fulton County might disagree; Willis recently won re-election in a landslide.) The court has not dismissed the charges against Trump, but the case likely faces steep odds.

• On this week’s episode of UNDISTRACTED, Brittany Packnett Cunningham sits down with Eliza Cooney and Natasha Stoynoff, two women who have accused Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Donald Trump, respectively, of sexual misconduct. Cooney, who charges that now-cabinet nominee Kennedy groped her when she worked as a nanny for his family, says that despite going public with her accusations, she has not been contacted by the FBI, which is responsible for vetting nominees ahead of their Senate confirmation hearings. When asked if she would be willing to speak to the FBI, Cooney said, “I’m open. I consider it a civic duty.” You can listen to the full conversation here.

• The University of Iowa announced that it will be retiring Caitlin Clark’s jersey in February. Clark will be present for the ceremony and said in a statement, “I’m forever proud to be a Hawkeye…It will be a great feeling to look up in the rafters and see my jersey alongside those that I’ve admired for so long.”

WEEKEND READING 📚

On a lifetime of silence: Earlier this year, Andrea Skinner, the daughter of late writer Alice Munro, revealed that she had been assaulted by Munro’s second husband—and that Munro knew. Skinner was forced to be silent for years. Why did her mother betray her? (New York Times Magazine)

On more AI dangers: Tech companies pushing AI are also planning to build new gas power plants and pipelines to support the growing energy demands of AI. This is literally what they were asked not to do. (Heated)

On criminalizing pregnancy: A prosecutor in Mississippi had been threatening pregnant drug users with 20-year sentences in the hope that it would force the mothers to get sober. He had no idea that the majority of these women had ended up in prison—until one woman, Brandy Moore, fought the charges against her. (The Marshall Project/Mississippi Today)

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