In a New Interview, Gisèle Pelicot's Attorney Describes Her Reaction to Husband's 'Degradation'

Several months ago, when Stéphanne Babboneau met his client, Gisèle Pelicot, the Paris-based criminal defense attorney was tasked with the unimaginable: telling the woman who'd been repeatedly raped by her ex-husband, Dominique, and scores of strangers while she was unconscious between 2011 and 2020 all the sordid details before she, herself, learned them in a courtroom. The case has quickly become known as a sexual abuse trial of unprecedented importance — not just in France, but around the world.

“Everyone was extremely worried she could have a nervous breakdown,” Babonneau told the Guardian in an interview published on Wednesday. “What would happen when she was faced with the full truth and scale of what was done to her?” In short: become every survivor's hero.

Since September, Gisèle has been present in court as her husband of nearly 50 years, and 50 of the men who sexually assaulted her, have taken the stand, each one offering an onslaught of disturbing testimony more undigestible than the last. “The whole world has been impressed by her dignity and resilience. People come up to her all the time – not just at the court, but in the street, to thank her,” Babonneau said. “Some of the young women are in tears."

The men met Dominique on a now-defunct message board called “Without their knowledge." There, Dominique offered men he'd never met the opportunity to rape his wife who he had already been drugging nightly with a sedative. For nearly a decade, Dominique invited over 80 men to do whatever they wanted to his wife and the mother of his children as he documented the assaults. In total, police counted 20,000 images on his hard drive after his 2020 arrest. A number of them have been shown in court throughout the proceedings.

“Gisèle knew she had been put to sleep, but not the lingerie, the degrading words, the paper [over her face]..." Babonneau said. “We had to prepare her for the fact she was not only sexually abused, but that there was a real intention to degrade her.” Babonneau told the Guardian there were videos taken “on the night of her birthday; on New Year’s Eve; on Valentine’s Day; in her daughter’s bed; on her dining room table; in her car at a motorway service station."

“She was strangely calm,” Babonneau described of Gisèle's demeanor when she was told the details. “Later, we understood why. She was an ordinary woman, a pensioner living in the south of France, and what could she expect from life? No trauma, no dramatics, a nice house in a nice village. She thought this would be her life for ever.” Dominique was called to the police station on November 2, 2020, and told Gisèle it was only on allegations of taking photos up women's skirts. He explained it wouldn't be pleasant, but they could go shopping afterward. That same day, police informed Gisèle about what they'd found on his computer. “Nothing could be more violent than that day,” Babonneau said. “If she could survive that, if she could survive the turmoil of the following months, she could face whatever would come.”

Frankly, anyone else who's survived all that Gisèle has might've justifiably felt more comfortable with the details being parsed out in private proceedings. As affirmed by Babbonneau, however, she pushed for an open trial.

“She felt what she had been through should not be discussed behind closed doors,” Babonneau said. If the trial had been closed, without the presence of the press or public, she would be behind doors with nobody but her, us, perhaps some family, and 51 accused men and 40 defense lawyers. And she didn’t want to be jailed in a courtroom with them for four months, her on one side and 90 other people on the opposite benches."

In her own powerful testimony, Gisèle said she had listened to many of the wives, mothers, and sisters describe the co-defendants as “exceptional men” who they thought were incapable of rape.

“Me, I had the same in my house,” she said of Dominique, adding that she had once considered him the “perfect man.”

“A rapist is not someone in a parking lot at night,” Gisèle added. Dominique, she said, did much of the cooking in the house and even brought her favorite dessert, raspberry ice cream, to her on a nightly basis. This, she now understands, was how he administered the drug that rendered her unconscious.

Before Dominique’s arrest, Gisèle said she feared she was developing Alzheimer’s or another serious illness due to years of inexplicable memory lapses, hair loss, and weight loss. On the stand, she described how Dominique attended multiple doctors’ appointments with her in pursuit of a diagnosis — all the while he continued to ply her with drugs, invite strangers into their home to rape her, and prolifically document their assaults.

Of his own reaction to the details of Dominique's crimes, Babonneau said: "It was hard for me to understand how something like this could even happen." His hope (as well as Gisèle's), he told the Guardian, is that the impact of the case will not only change the way sexual assault is prosecuted but forever shift the shame of survivors onto where it belongs: their perpetrators.

“It is no longer possible that if someone wakes up and can’t remember anything, and they have gynecological issues, that they will not think of Gisèle Pelicot," Babonneau said. "Rape trials will be held in public and exposed thanks to Gisèle Pelicot.”