In September 2024, a courtroom in France was at the centre of attention around the world as a 72-year-old grandmother named Gisele Pelicot, a grandmother herself, decided to make a remarkable choice from Mazan. She refused to be anonymous and insisted on a trial in a court of law, and the world was forced to see what a nightmare a decade-long ordeal had been in her own house. The case had shaken France and other parts of the world, and it had brought about discussions on consent, marital rape, and the threats that people are unaware of within closed doors. The country was witnessing the information: Dominique Pelicot, her 50-year-old husband, had been raping and drugging her systematically, inviting dozens of strangers to do so.
The case forces people to coldly rethink what safety looks like. Society has learned to look out for red flags such as a hot temper, jealousy, and controlling behaviour. But what shall we do when there are none? Dominique Pelicot was not a stereotype. He was the half-century husband, the one who had built a reputation of being a faithful, loyal husband over a period of fifty years. Neighbours and relatives regarded him as a quiet retired man, but he was the mastermind of a ten-year horror.
Read More: Psychological Perspective on Sexual Coercion and Rape
Overview of the Case
Dominique Pelicot sedated his wife, Gisele, with strong anxiolytic and sedative drugs, which induced her into a coma between 2011 and 2020. As she slept, he called men he had met online in forums to come to their home in Mazan, France, and rape her. He carefully filmed such attacks and formed a library of evidence in his possession, which would subsequently result in his arrest. The crimes were accidentally found out in 2020 when Dominique was seen on camera recording under the skirts of women in a supermarket. His gadgets were examined by police, and thousands of videos and images of the systemic mistreatment of his wife were found.
Authorities later found and prosecuted over 50 men. They were between the ages of 26 and 74 and had different walks of life, such as firefighters, truck drivers, soldiers, journalists and municipal workers. The majority of them lived within 50 kilometres of the Pelicot home. Throughout this time, Gisele had strong physical symptoms: blackouts with no cause, lack of hair, weight change and gynaecological issues. She used to visit doctors many times, but every time, a doctor refused her medical assistance, explaining her symptoms as menopause and age.
The Mask of Sanity
This total separation of a normal life and an internal world of depravity is a kind of case study of the mask of sanity (Cleckley, 1941). It is not merely lying but creating a reality that is so real that the truth is not even an option. Pelicot did not just hide his actions when he was playing the role of the ideal partner; he turned his image into a weapon. He made sure that whenever Gisele had a moment of suspicion about her condition or the surrounding world, she would disregard it herself, since it could not match the man the girl thought she knew.
Narcissistic Entitlement and the Psychopathic Core
The mask was accompanied by a lack of remorse, pathological lying, big-head self-esteem, and playing games, which, as Hare (2003) defines, are parts of psychopathy. The most troubling is the narcissistic sense of ownership- Pelicot had the sense that he owned the body of his wife in all ways.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is described as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behaviour), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In its most severe form, malignant narcissism combines these traits with aggression and sadism (Kernberg, 1984). Pelicot embodied this pathology. Gisele was not a human being to him, but just an object to satisfy him and sell to others as a commodity. The ten years of betrayal demonstrate his ability to make continual, calculated manipulation-he would reassure her about her symptoms when he was aware of what was killing her health.
The Unnamed Crime: Rape as Marital Entitlement
What has occurred must be named: this was systematic, repeated, drug-facilitated rape by her husband and over fifty men. Consent must have consciousness and agreement that is freely made (Pineau, 1989). An unconscious person cannot consent. Nevertheless, cultural reluctance persists in acknowledging marital rape as rape.
In the greater part of history, marriage gave everlasting sexual consent: the conjugal rights of a husband (Russell, 1990). Marital rape was not criminalised in France until 1992, after a historic court ruling. The culture has been reluctant to alter the cultural perception that rape may be committed by a spouse, which is now explicitly written in the French Penal Code. The Pelicot case has rekindled the arguments concerning consent during marriage and the long-held belief that a husband possesses privileged access to the body of the wife.
Bergen (2006) documents how marital rape victims experience more severe trauma than victims of stranger rape, precisely because the violation comes from someone trusted. Each of the fifty men saw an unconscious woman and proceeded anyway, revealing what Brownmiller (1975) identified as the continuum of sexual violence—rape as an extension of normalised male sexual entitlement and female objectification.
The Survival Blindness of Betrayal
With information about the case emerging, a common, though superficial, question appeared: How could someone endure a decade of this and not notice? Such reasoning overlooks the psychological reality of how the brain processes an utter violation of trust. When a person’s life is attached to their partner—emotionally, financially, and socially—the mind often enters a state of betrayal blindness.
This particular survival mechanism was conceptualised as betrayal trauma by Freyd (1996). Had Gisele been forced to confront the truth, her entire world would have collapsed in an instant. To prevent this, the brain essentially develops a mental partitioning. She experienced extreme cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957). On one hand were the physical symptoms: unexplainable weight loss, hair loss, and lost hours. On the other hand was a husband who appeared supportive and devoted. When the brain has to receive a horrifying truth and a comforting lie, it almost always goes to the latter so that the individual can go on.
Read More: Trauma-Focused Therapy for Survivors of Sexual Abuse by family or trusted people
System Failures: Medical Gaslighting
Gisele did not simply ignore her symptoms; she actively sought help. She reported her blackouts and deteriorating condition to healthcare professionals. But the system failed her in a manner tragically common for women. She was dismissed by doctors who, seeing her age and apparently normal domestic life, attributed her symptoms to menopause, stress, or fatigue.
This represents medical gaslighting at its most devastating. When medical professionals explain to a woman that her physical reality is not real or not significant, then she is, in effect, returned to the hands of her abuser. According to van der Kolk (2014) in The Body Keeps the Score, there is a storage of trauma in the body even when it is not available to the conscious mind. Her body was the scorekeeper of Gisele, and her nervous system was reacting to the trauma of the assaults despite her conscious mind being suppressed by chemicals because of somatic dissociation. Her hair was thinning, her body was failing as it was trying to digest something horrible it could not describe.
The normalisation of women’s suffering, the cultural expectation that women should tolerate pain, discomfort, and mysterious ailments as simply part of being female, created the conditions for this medical dismissal. Van der Kolk’s research demonstrates that the body maintains a record of trauma even when consciousness has been chemically erased, manifesting in physical symptoms that demand attention even when no one is listening.
Misogyny as Infrastructure
There was no case of individual negligence in Gisele’s medical dismissal; it was structural misogyny. Women’s pain is systematically minimised or attributed to psychological issues (Hoffmann & Tarzian, 2001). This reflects what Manne (2017) identifies as the logic of misogyny: a system that enforces women’s subordination. When Gisele reported her unexplainable symptoms, she challenged the narrative of her “normal” marriage. The healthcare system’s response was to enforce that narrative, to send her back to her husband, back to her proper place.
This same infrastructure enabled fifty men to rape an unconscious woman without moral conflict. Objectification theory (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997) describes how women are culturally conditioned to be viewed primarily as objects for male use. The cultural backdrop of male sexual entitlement created conditions in which Pelicot could find fifty willing participants (Murnen et al., 2002). These men were responding to an invitation that was packaged in a way that a husband is having a share of his wife or an invitation that a wife is property and not a human being, and thus has the sovereignty of her own body.
The 50 Strangers: Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Crimes
Maybe the most shocking part of the case is the involvement of over 50 other men. They were not professional criminals or social misfits, but firefighters, truck drivers, journalists and fathers. They were ordinary men who integrated participation in these assaults into their normal lives.
Their participation was enabled through multiple social psychological mechanisms. First, dehumanisation (Haslam, 2006)—in their minds, Gisele was not a person but a prop provided by her husband. Second, there is the question of how a husband could consent on behalf of his wife? This shows a very patriarchal supposition that wives are property whose bodies they can gain entry to through the permission of the husband. That is not consent; it is the illusion of consent that is made possible by power and ownership.
Third, social influence, like conformity and normative influence, was critical. Asch (1951) showed the way in which individuals adopt group norms as they go against their own judgment. The online spaces that these men met in established a distorted normative system that viewed raping a woman in an unconscious state as a normal thing and even gave practical encouragement. This is social identity theory (Tajfel and Turner, 1979), where people follow group norms to remain a member and have a sense of identity in the group- here, a digital subculture of predators.
Fourth, these men could have reduced their personal guilt through diffusion of responsibility (Darley and Latané, 1968). With dozens of other men involved, each man could have justified his own involvement as less important. The fact that the husband gave permission to them was an easy way to legitimise their actions.
Fifth, they were able to take part without a feeling of guilt or embarrassment due to moral disengagement (Bandura, 1999). They evaded accountability (the husband gave permission), dehumanised the victim (she was unconscious anyway, so she would not know), and framed rape as something different with the help of euphemistic terms.
Lastly, there was the deindividuation, the loss of personal self-awareness when being in a group (Zimbardo, 1969). With the anonymity of online forums and the darkness in the Pelicot home, these men dropped their personal identity and moral measures and joined a group that allowed evil.
This is what Arendt (1963) described as the banality of evil, or the idea that terrible deeds are often carried out by people who merely obey the regulations of a pathological process without doubting it. There were online communities where men were able to normalise and organise acts of rape (Henry and Powell, 2015).
Power, Control, and Hidden Terror
The Pelicot case challenges the conventional understanding of domestic violence. Most legal frameworks focus on discrete violent incidents. This misses the reality of coercive control as theorised by Stark (2007). Pelicot did not need to be overtly aggressive or physically violent in conventional ways. He exercised complete control over Gisele’s physical state and her perception of reality.
This created a state of unrecognised terror. Gisele spent ten years in biological distress without knowing who her predator was. The “mask” was not simply concealment; it was the very instrument that kept her confused and vulnerable.
The Defiant Reclaiming of Self
In 2024, Gisele Pelicot made a decision that transformed the entire case. By refusing a private trial, she exposed her assailants to public scrutiny. She famously stated that she wanted the shame to change sides.
This is an externalisation, psychologically speaking. Ten years later, she had lived with the physical and psychological ramifications of these offences in her body. She had taken that burden back to the men who committed these acts by making the evidence public. In his work, Trauma and Recovery, Herman (1992) claims that the reality of the situation has to be accepted, a process that would start the healing process and restore the agency of the victim. Gisele was not just demanding a judgment according to the law; she was re-appropriating her own story. She was no longer a crime object in an undercover crime but the writer of an open conflict.
Through that decision, Gisele chose to go outside the cultural narrative of shame on a victim. She has engaged in what Gavey (2005) explains to be resistance to rape culture- the rejection of stigma internalisation, demand for public responsibility of the perpetrators.
Read More: Somatic Experiencing and Body-Based Trauma Therapy for Survivors of Known-Perpetrator Abuse
Resetting History: Legal and Social Impact
The Pelicot case has completely changed the environment of discussion of sexual violence in France and the rest of Europe. The move by Gisele to waive anonymity and insist on a public trial went against decades of French legal precedent in which rape victims are usually not subjected to public attention. Her words that la honte doit changer de camp (shame must change sides) became the cry of the sexual violence survivors all over the country.
The trial, held in Avignon at the end of 2024, attracted the attention of international media and caused protests in the country in favour of Gisele. French feminist groups used the case to seek more effective laws concerning chemical submission. And to go against the cultural acceptance of sexual entitlement in marriage. The very visibility of the procedures prompted the French society to face the problematic reality of the banality of the sexual predations and systematic inefficiencies within the system in support of these predators.
According to the legal experts, the case is expected to establish some crucial precedents when it comes to prosecuting drug-facilitated sexual assault, as well as acknowledging the severity of the crimes that take place within a marriage. The co-defendants alone and the volume of video evidence have forced even the most inquisitive mind to conclude that this case is never going to be an isolated case. The question of how a husband could give consent on behalf of his wife is raised.
The Mirror to Society
Gisele Pelicot has become a mirror to society. The pathology, as she has demonstrated, was never hers. It was the property of the man who was the one who had drugged her, and it was the property of the fifty men who were under the impression that they could use her. The fact that she is a dignified, calm presence in the courtroom is the total refusal of the stereotype of a victim. She has demonstrated that it is possible, ten years after the violation, to stand and reveal the monster and put shame back where it belongs.
Her example compels us to reckon: rapists are usually husbands and fathers, neighbours and workmates, medical institutions are not solitary against women, misogyny is organizational apparatus, and rape is material history. The question is not why Gisele did not know. The question is why society created conditions in which fifty men could rape an unconscious woman and return to their ordinary lives, and the question is what will be done with the mirror she has held up to society. When can fifty men violate the unconscious woman and continue with their normal lives? What we shall do with the mirror she has raised before us all is the question.
References +
American Psychiatric Association. (2000). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., text rev.). American Psychiatric Association.
Arendt, H. (1963). Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil. Viking Press.
Asch, S. E. (1951). Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments. In H. Guetzkow (Ed.), Groups, leadership and men (pp. 177–190). Carnegie Press.
Bandura, A. (1999). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3(3), 193–209. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr0303_3
Bergen, R. K. (2006). Marital rape: New research and directions. VAWnet, a project of the National Resource Centre on Domestic Violence. https://vawnet.org
Brownmiller, S. (1975). Against our will: Men, women and rape. Simon & Schuster.
Darley, J. M., & Latané, B. (1968). Bystander intervention in emergencies: Diffusion of responsibility. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8(4), 377–383. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0025589
Cleckley, H. M. (1941). The mask of sanity: An attempt to clarify some issues about the so-called psychopathic personality. The C.V. Mosby Company.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press.
Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women’s lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 21(2), 173–206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.1997.tb00108.x
Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse. Harvard University Press.
Gavey, N. (2005). Just sex? The cultural scaffolding of rape. Routledge.
Hare, R. D. (2003). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (2nd ed.). Multi-Health Systems.
Haslam, N. (2006). Dehumanisation: An integrative review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 10(3), 252–264. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327957pspr1003_4
Henry, N., & Powell, A. (2015). Embodied harms: Gender, shame, and technology-facilitated sexual violence in cyberspace. Violence Against Women, 21(6), 758–779. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077801215576581
Herman, J. L. (1992). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence—From domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books.
Hoffmann, D. E., & Tarzian, A. J. (2001). The girl who cried pain: A bias against women in the treatment of pain. Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 29(1), 13–27. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1748-720X.2001.tb00037.x
Kernberg, O. F. (1984). Severe personality disorders: Psychotherapeutic strategies. Yale University Press.
Manne, K. (2017). Down girl: The logic of misogyny. Oxford University Press.
Murnen, S. K., Wright, C., & Kaluzny, G. (2002). If “boys will be boys,” then girls will be victims? A meta-analytic review of the research that relates masculine ideology to sexual aggression. Sex Roles, 46(11–12), 359–375. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1020488928736
Pineau, L. (1989). Date rape: A feminist analysis. Law and Philosophy, 8(2), 217–243.
Russell, D. E. H. (1990). Rape in marriage(Rev. ed.). Indiana University Press.
Stark, E. (2007). Coercive control: How men entrap women in personal life. Oxford University Press.
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations(pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.
Zimbardo, P. G. (1969). The human choice: Individuation, reason, and order versus deindividuation, impulse, and chaos. In W. J. Arnold & D. Levine (Eds.), Nebraska symposium on motivation (Vol. 17, pp. 237–307). University of Nebraska Press.
