Audley’s Unconventionally Wise Person of the Year 2024
At Audley, we draw on our principle of ‘Unconventional Wisdom’ to find solutions to the challenges facing our clients. This award recognises a leader or person who over the past year pushed boundaries by thinking or acting in a unique way.
Audley’s 2023 Unconventionally Wise Person of the Year was a billionaire investor. In 2022, a head of state. This year, the title goes to a septuagenarian housewife from a little French village who quickly – and in the most uncomfortable circumstances – became a feminist hero and international icon.
The injustices Gisèle Pelicot was subject to are well-documented and too extensive to list. Drugged by her husband and raped over 200 times by more than 70 men, only 54 of whom were captured accurately enough on the videos secretly taken to be on trial this year. Gratefully thanking her husband of 50 years when he took her to the doctor for ‘inexplainable’ gynecological pain, and neurological tests to determine whether it was Alzheimer’s or a brain tumor causing her tiredness and blackouts. Hearing her daughter’s screams when she told her three grown children of their father’s actions – screams which she says are “forever etched in my mind”.
Despite the intimate nature of the heinous crimes she was subject to by the man who called her a “saint,” Gisèle waived her right to anonymity during the ensuing lengthy and emotionally exhausting court battle. Not only did she give up her identity and bring the public and the media into her trial, but she and her legal team pushed for the videos taken to be shown in court, to combat the thesis of ‘accidental rape’ put forward by the co-defendants.
In doing so, Gisèle may well pave the way for some of the most wide-reaching reforms of French sexual assault law in history. To understand the significance of her impact, you have to understand that French law is some of the most backward of European nations when it comes to sexual assault.
Until 2021, there was no age of consent in France. Today, the maximum sentence for rape is the same whether for one rape or for hundreds: 20 years. There is no concept of consent in French rape law (meaning that the prosecution’s case rests on a confusing definition of ‘surprise’). The archaic attitudes that these laws reflect have been visible during the trial. Some of the co-defendants claimed that they thought a husband’s consent sufficed. One, a married nurse, told media, “Gisèle Pelicot is not the only victim. I am one too.”
This is before we consider the lawless online environment that enabled her husband Dominique to broadcast his plan and make arrangements with the co-defendants. He met them on Coco.fr, an easily accessible ‘dating website,’ home to unmoderated chatrooms glorifying rape and abuse. Laws around accountability for such content remain opaque: regulation of content on websites is a responsibility of the platform themselves. Since her case came to light, it’s been discovered that Coco.fr was subject to over 23,000 legal proceedings by 480 victims between 2021 and 2024. While Coco.fr has been shut down (and its founder has moved to Bulgaria and renounced his French nationality) similar online French forums where sexual abuse is openly discussed are still easily accessible and actively in use.
There is precious little about ‘chemical submission’ in French law, i.e. drugging someone without their knowledge. Since Gisèle’s case, the government has announced new measures to combat violence against women, including a campaign about drug-induced abuse and funds for victims of male violence. The concept of consent may now be introduced into the law.
As commentators have noted, the most frightening thing about Gisèle’s case is that her story is not one of a lone man’s crimes. It’s the story of dozens of men – men who were deemed ‘normal’ by society, by their friends, and families. The men were not all abused, unstable individuals (although many leant on this narrative in court to defend their actions) who gained access to Gisèle on the dark web, penetrable by only those with some expertise of a criminal underworld. They were firefighters and nurses, some in their twenties, some in their seventies. They had families of their own and were respected members of the community. They all lived less than 31 miles from her house. And yet they all had sex with an unconscious woman. Several of those men told Dominique they were also drugging their wives.
Gisèle’s case has succeeded in casting a spotlight on this issue and ‘turned the shame around,’ but the frightening question women are asking now is: how wide a shadow does that shame cast?
In a year that saw endless stories about violence against women, Gisèle’s case is a reminder that it is not only those of considerable power and influence who might choose to take advantage of the women close to them, as Mohamed Al Fayed, for example, has been posthumously accused of doing. But it is also a reminder of the power of owning your own story. As one court observer said, “We weren’t expecting a woman like this.”
For her courageous actions and much more, Gisèle is Audley’s Unconventionally Wise Person of the Year.
Update: On Thursday 19 December, Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment. According to The Times, “[a]t least 20 other men have been found guilty of aggravated rape” and “[n]one of the accused has so far been cleared.”
By Imogen Beecroft, Managing Partner at Audley.
Image credit/Velvet/Edited/License