The trial in France of a man who drugged his wife so dozens of strangers could rape her while she was unconscious was both ordinary and extraordinary, say AFP journalists who covered it.

Details of the case have horrified audiences in France and abroad since the trial began on September 2, drawing renewed attention to the widespread crime of rape and the question of consent.

But it has also catapulted its main victim, 72-year-old Gisele Pelicot, into the spotlight as a feminist heroine calling on a patriarchal society to change its attitude to sex crimes.

Dominique Pelicot, 72, has admitted to sedate his then-wife with sleeping pills from 2011 to 2020 so that men he recruited online could rape her in her own bed, and has meticulously documented the abuse on video.

As the trial nears its end and verdicts are expected on Thursday, the AFP journalists who covered it say it has raised questions about both gender relations and sensitive reporting of horrific abuses.

Video journalist Viken Kantarci remembers the first day of the trial.

“Gisele Pelicot showed up and we knew that she, like us, was discovering for the first time all these faces – the faces of the men who had raped her,” said Kantarci, who reported the story along with his colleague Fabien Novial to AFPTV .

“We were soon immersed in the atmosphere of what the trial would be like: something quite ordinary in terms of the type of people we see, but also extraordinary because there are so many and the scale of the alleged crimes,” he said.

In addition to Dominique Pelicot, the other defendants, aged 27 to 74, come from all walks of life, including an unemployed man, a truck driver, a journalist, a firefighter, an engineer and an electrician.

All are accused of rape, attempted rape or, in one case, touching Gisele Pelicot, except one, who is accused of repeatedly abusing his own wife after drugging her with Dominique Pelicot’s help.

Several have admitted to rape, but many claim Dominique Pelicot manipulated them and they thought they were part of a couple’s fantasy.

– “Anonymous Sacrifice of the Hero” –

Many had expected the trial to take place behind closed doors.

But Gisele Pelicot demanded on the first day that the hearings be public. She argued that it should be up to the perpetrators, not the victims, to feel shame.

David Courbet, one of the AFP text journalists reporting from the courtroom, said the decision changed everything.

Gisele Pelicot’s election “allowed the trial to exist and hopefully left a mark on history,” he said.

To protect her family’s privacy, AFP initially used only the primary victim’s first name and the first letter of her last name.

But after she spoke to the media three days into the trial and declared that she would fight for her cause until the end, the news outlet decided, with the consent of her family’s lawyers, to publish her full last name.

While Gisele Pelicot has since divorced her husband and returned to using her maiden name, she chose to use the last name that some of her children and grandchildren bore during the process.

“She went from anonymous victim to heroine and carried a political, universal message,” Courbet said.

As news of the trial spread, Gisele Pelicot, with her fringed bob haircut and round sunglasses, inspired art and messages of support in Avignon and other French cities, as well as abroad.

The city of Avignon began to beat the pace of the trial, there were repeated feminist protests outside the courthouse and restaurants were often fully booked for lunch.

Journalists soon learned who ate where: which restaurants served the civil parties and which fed the defendants.

“Starting from just a few cameras at the beginning of the trial, additional French and foreign teams arrived in the following days,” said video journalist Kantarci, naming in particular British, US and Spanish media.

Every day they rushed into the courtroom to take photos or audio recordings of civil parties, defendants and their lawyers on their way to and from hearings.

As early as 5:45 a.m. – two and a half hours before the courthouse opens its doors – citizens stood outside and tried to get one of the around 30 seats in a single room and to partly broadcast the hearings via video link without success.

– Photographer in awe –

AFP photographers and video journalists, who were barred from entering the courtroom itself, tried to capture a sense of the proceedings from the sidelines, capturing cries of support for Gisele Pelicot outside the court and speaking to villagers in Mazan, where the Pelicots used to live lived, as well as to sociologists.

In the courtroom, Benoit Peyrucq sketched the people taking the witness stand or sitting in the dock. His sketches of Dominique Pelicot are among the most popular among AFP customers.

Just outside the door, AFP saw Gisele Pelicot arrive with her head held high to be greeted with applause or even bouquets of flowers, while her alleged tormentors tried to avoid cameras and hide their features under hoodies, baseball caps or surgical face masks.

Kantarci, the video journalist, said some were even “aggressive towards the media.”

Photographer Christophe Simon, who has worked for AFP for four decades, said the process required more sensitivity than other stories.

“We gave Gisele Pelicot and her family a lot of space because we could imagine what they were going through,” he said.

Instead, day after day, he said, he built a relationship with Gisele Pelicot and her lawyers, greeting them and exchanging pleasantries.

“One day I even stumbled and she helped me get up,” he said.

On October 23, her lawyers agreed to let him portray her. She has not accepted another request of this kind since then.

They met in the early afternoon in the garden of the hotel where she was staying.

The veteran war reporter told Gisele Pelicot he was very “impressed” by her courage.

“She looked surprised and interested,” said the photojournalist, whose portrait of Gisele Pelicot staring directly into his lens has now been published around the world.

– Disturbing Footage –

As AFP’s then-bureau chief for the southern city of Marseille and surrounding areas, including Avignon, Isabelle Wesselingh coordinated much of the reporting with her deputy chief Olivier Lucazeau throughout most of the trial.

“The repeated rape of a woman is truly shocking, and it also makes you realize how much the case has torn a family apart,” she said.

But also “we had to remember that a trial requires a two-sided debate, a fair reporting of the defense’s position and a certain questioning of things – all without downplaying the suffering.”

Following AFP’s guidelines for reporting sexual abuse, the team prepared by discussing the best language “to avoid voyeurism and preserve the dignity of victims while covering incidents that were sometimes truly heinous.” she added.

Before the trial began, text journalists also discussed how to prevent post-traumatic stress with AFP’s occupational doctor.

This was particularly useful after judges, at the request of the civil parties, allowed reporters and members of the public to view the graphic videos Dominique Pelicot filmed of strangers abusing his wife.

David Courbet says watching the footage made him realize how important it was to be seen.

“They speak for themselves,” he said.

To cope with their brutality, he tried to concentrate on the background image or the news broadcast that could be heard in the background.

Philippe Siuberski, another text reporter who covered the trial, said Gisele Pelicot was “asleep and unresponsive.”

“You could clearly hear snoring,” said the journalist, who normally lives in the southern city of Montpellier.

“We are doing our job as journalists. But it’s not always nice to witness,” he said.

“I watched two to three seconds (of the footage) and then went back to my notes or looked to see how Dominique Pelicot or Gisele Pelicot reacted,” he said.

“More than the words, it is the images that stay in the memory,” said the journalist, who also covered the 2004 trial of Belgian child rapist and murderer Marc Dutroux.

– ‘Thank you’ –

Due to staff availability, it was predominantly men who covered the gang rape trial for AFP.

“Ideally it would have been good to have a man and a woman, but we had to plan based on who was available and who might be reticent due to the nature of the case,” Wesselingh said.

But she said it was “interesting to see men with these questions about masculinity and the behavior of 50 ordinary men,” she said.

Courbet, the text reporter, said he hoped the trial would help men “think more about consent.”

“The trial has forced us men to reflect on our past, present and especially future behavior,” he said.

His colleague Siuberski said he was particularly impressed by Gisele Pelicot’s strength in “never deviating from what she wanted to say,” even though she could have easily been overwhelmed by what was happening.

Kantarci, the video reporter, said it was difficult not to be touched by everything Gisele Pelicot had achieved.

“As a journalist, I probably shouldn’t do this, but I want to thank her,” he said.

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