Gisèle Pelicot Is a Hero
Not all men, but her husband, a local councillor, a nurse, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, a soldier, a firefighter and a civil servant, to name a few.
— Zoë Grünewald (@zoe_grunewald) September 7, 2024
This case sickens me. We should be taking to the streets. Women are never safe. https://t.co/4oqZtsWVMM
Like many of you, I’ve been following the news of Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman from Avignon whose husband Dominique Pelicot drugged her, so he could watch men rape her. The abuse went on for over a decade. Along with Pelicot, 50 men, between the ages of 26 and 74 are on trial for their involvement. They answered a rape-kink ad, on a now-defunct site “Against Her Knowledge” (which wasn’t shut down until this June!) The police haven’t identified yet an additional 30 more men caught on video .
Not one of those men reported what was happening to Gisèle Pelicot to the police. Dominique Pélicot was discovered for the lowly perv crime of taking pictures up women’s skirts in a supermarket. When the police confiscated his electronics, that’s when they found the rape videos.
She thought her world was safe.
Gisèle Pélicot had no idea. She thought she was in a long and happy marriage. Her harrowing physical ailments, like hair loss and brain fog, she feared were early dementia. And doctors never diagnosed her gynecological problems. Because your average health practitioner does not think in terms of unspeakable nightmares. After her D-Day (if you can call it that…), she found she had four sexually transmitted diseases. One of the guys who raped her repeatedly was HIV positive.
In court last week, where 51 men, including Pélicot, are on trial, Gisèle testified that she had no idea of her husband’s depravity; their marriage had been happy, their sex life conventional. Her world had “collapsed” when she saw herself lying like a “rag doll” in her bed, being “sacrificed on the altar of vice”. Her daughter, on being told of what her father had done, had screamed “like a wild beast”. One of her sons had vomited.
Tracy, what does any of this have to do with infidelity? Aren’t you getting a bit far afield from the Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life ethos here?
Pelicot filed for divorce. Leave a monster, gain a life. Actually, I think a lot of chumps can relate to Gisèle Pélicot, judging by the number of people sending me articles. Talk about secret sexual basements! The double life revealed, the theft of your reality, the absolute devastation at realizing you never knew this person at all. And for WHAT? A sick kink? A power trip?
CN, you know what excuse Dominique Pélicot gave for his decades-long gang bang?
Gisèle wouldn’t agree to open up their marriage.
Pelicot said: ”My wife and I had a discussion about swinging but she didn’t agree so I drugged her”,’ the psychologist recounted.
Madame Montagne said Pelicot maintained he loved his wife, but she added: ‘He sees his partner as an object to satisfy his sexual and narcissistic needs. His wife is then a partial object and no longer an object of total love.’
It comes as another prison psychologist this morning told the court that Pelicot had a ‘split personality’, lacked empathy and inherited the temper of his father, who was said to be a violent abuser.
She also revealed Pelicot maintains the sickening abuse of his wife would have continued if he had not been arrested – and complained that his life had been ruined by the criminal charges brought against him.
He has a split personality? So, like, did the other EIGHTY men who raped her within a 30-mile radius also have split personalities? Is this an affliction unique to Avignon?
Classic sad sausage.
I’m sorry this is so hard for Dominique. No harder, really. His life has been ruined! It’s not what he did, it’s your reaction to it. What’s with these criminal charges?
Also, in typical fuckwit manner, he hasn’t handled accountability well. Court gave him a stomach ache. So, he was excused.
Yes, this case is freakish, but the sexual entitlement and misogyny that fuels this behavior isn’t. I agree with this take in The Week:
Much has also been made of the seeming normality of many of the defendants: they include nurses, civil servants, a journalist and a firefighter. But when it comes to the cruelties men are capable of inflicting, I am past feeling surprised. This case is unusual; but the misogynistic attitudes that enabled it – that women are “meat puppets”, whose purpose is to pleasure men – are not. They are shared by men who use prostitutes; by those who get off on flashing women, harassing them and groping them; and they are promoted online, where porn has normalised the view that, for women, sex should be painful and humiliating.
Paging Esther Perel! Hey, aren’t you going to swoop in and explain rape-kink as exuberant acts of defiance? Or quests for aliveness? Is this the French sophistication you speak of? Are we not going to hear some version of “What you don’t know can’t hurt you?” or that abuse makes a marriage stronger?
I think you’re getting carried away here, Tracy.
Am I? Can you think of anyone who has celebrated and normalized the secret sexual basement more than Perel? As if consent was a bummer. The star of the show is transgressiveness! I wonder if that’s what those “normal” men were thinking when they signed up for a recreational evening of suburban rape. Hey, the husband said it was okay! He consented for her! It’s just edgy sex. Don’t judge.
On that point, what were those men thinking, check out the really excellent piece “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado Perez on Substack. She asks:
These men who hate us, they are surely in a minority.
But then a news story emerges that shakes this foundation of semi-security and finds me looking at the men around me and thinking, “would you do this to me?”
That’s the primal horror. Not knowing who is safe. And discovering that someone closest to you is a stranger who hates you.
No one had a clue. No one had any idea how much these men hated women. Because how else can you describe a man who arranges, in a chat-room dedicated to non-consensual sex, aka rape, to come over and rape another man’s unconscious wife? Who do you do that to if not someone you hate?
And to these men, I have a question: why are you not talking about it?
The second thing we just can’t stop talking about is how many of them there were. In just this one small area of France. What does that mean about how many other men would do this if they had a chance? How many men in our lives? Men who are married. With children, and grandchildren. Who seem like devoted husbands and fathers?
Secret sexual basements are abusive.
I’ve been shouting this from the rooftops for 12 years. And yet double lives are so terrifyingly common. (How have I managed to fill over a decade’s worth of content?) Another excellent Substack piece by Rachel Hewitt, “Why Aren’t More Men Talking About This?” recites a depressing litany of the double lives of her acquaintance.
Off the top of my head, I can list numerous women among my acquaintances – or acquaintances of acquaintances – who have discovered that their (male) partners were living secret lives. It’s common knowledge that my late husband was secretly pursuing multiple court cases entirely unbeknownst to me, risking my and my children’s financial security and home. I know several women who have discovered husbands were maintaining long-running affairs; and one who found out that her husband had an entirely separate family: a secret second home, second wife, second daughter. There are women who have discovered their partners’ secret gambling addictions and serious debt, and their concealed alcoholism and cocaine addictions. I know women whose husbands outwardly performed respectable pillar-of-the-community roles, but in the home were abusive, violent tyrants. By far the majority of the secret lives that I’ve come across have been in the realm of sexual behaviour. I know of a woman whose, again, outwardly respectable husband was convicted not just of accessing child pornography but of creating websites through which to distribute it. I know another woman who discovered that her husband was sexually abusing their infant child. Another woman discovered that her husband had made literally thousands of bookings with prostitutes, including arranging for prostitutes to visit him when she was in the same house, asleep in the room above.
The discovery of men’s secret lives is devastating for women on multiple fronts. Such malevolent secrecy is not just a betrayal of trust, love and the terms on which relationships are agreed. It’s a way of men sabotaging the very foundations of every aspect of women’s lives, and I think that many men gain a great deal of satisfaction from undermining their wives like this. There’s a sense of gloating, in which men get off on their wives innocently going about their day-to-day business, thinking everything is fine and stable and sturdy, whilst, behind their backs, those men are working hard to bring everything crashing down. It’s a form of secret power. I think it’s important to recognise this: that many men’s secret lives are not conducted by trying to ignore their wives’ existence, or proceeding as if they don’t exist, but that some men literally get off on secretly hating and sabotaging their wives. Disregarding their wives isn’t enough; such men enjoy actively hating them. The woman I know whose husband was a prolific punter had a fetish for sexually undermining his wife. She discovered messages on his phone in which he had hired two prostitutes, one of whom to play the role of ‘the wife’. The man and the other prostitute strapped ‘the wife’ to a chair and ridiculed her ‘ugliness’ and ‘crap tits’ while they had sex in front of her. He literally got off on his secret hatred for her.
Women who have seen these darker sides of men recognise Dominique Pélicot’s behaviour.
Think of how long it takes a person to radically accept that darkness. Gisèle Pélicot is mighty because she refuses to be anonymous. She wants the world to know what those men did. The Guardian reports:
Bravely, Gisèle Pélicot, 72, has waived her right to anonymity to seek justice for all women who are victims of voyeurism, drug rape and secret surveillance, an unholy trinity of crime that can turn a 21st-century “smart” home into a chamber of horrors. Some of the accused claim that she had given consent, an issue at the heart of most rapes. “I was a dead woman,” she said quietly in an electrifying testimony at the criminal court in Avignon. “These people knew exactly what they were doing… They treated me like a rag doll.” Pélicot told the court that her calm demeanour masked “a field of devastation”.
You know who’s not out sick with a stomach ache, whinging to her lawyers? Badass Gisèle Pélicot. Despite her unimaginable pain, she’s in court every day with this message for the world:
“La honte doit changer de camp,” or “Shame must change sides.”
It’s horrifying how all those men seen this as okay. Is the urge to procreate and release the seed greater than respect or morals? Who thinks this is okay? Even consensually it would be questionable. The secret power dynamic. The ‘right’ to take their pleasure. Using someone for a thrill. Not questioning their own values and drive. Taking. Entitled gratification.
I’d like more men to speak out about this. Does the secret sexual thrill ‘top trump’ every other value? What’s the over-arching male feeling on this? Not being surprised by men having triple lives makes my opinion skewed. I was a victim of male entitlement. I wasn’t honoured or respected. It’s disturbing to see and experience yet it says more about the men then the victims.
I’ve just finished watching ‘Sambre’ a French/Belgium crime drama based on a real case of a prolific rapist over 30 years, the attitudes portrayed in each decade during the series have got better but then add in websites and online proliferation and it creates a whole new level to navigate.
I applaud Gisèle Pelicot’s bravery and dignity.
Control and domination has nothing to do with being Johnny Appleseed.
Evolutionarily speaking, dominance = greater likelihood of perpetuating your genetic line. Members of any species can exhibit behavioral extremes; humans are supposed to know better.
Evolutionarily speaking this is BS. It’s not even “humans are supposed to know better”. Humans are highly social animals with complicated personal and sexual relationships with one another; we don’t even have heat cycles the way other mammals do. Rape is not some kind of unfortunate but evolutionarily advantages thing we must struggle to get past.
I’ll venture to say that this kind of behavior has nothing whatever to do with, and is not powered by “the urge to procreate.”
Don’t really have words for this story. This is the level of hatred for women we fear and perhaps experienced in our own marriages. And then to have to send our children to live with these scum half or more of their lives.
I certainly wondered about two mystery illnesses I had where I woke up severely fatigued with no other symptoms, and could barely move for hours, but never developed any other symptoms. One time the FW happened to come home from wherever he was, and I was lying on the couch and could barely move. He smirked at me, which I thought nothing of at the time.
I have wondered about that from time to time.
Oh I hope to God it’s not that weedfree! I hope and pray he was just a being a bog-standard slimy git who was feeling spiteful glee that you were so knackered you’d crashed out on the settee!
Anything but THAT!!!
I dunno. Unfortunately the gaslighting makes one question everything.
Ditto. When I look back at how my own FW was unfeeling (albeit inconvenienced) any time I felt ill, for years, I just cannot believe that I accepted this behavior. I just thought this was my path, he was my guy, the one I had married and was committed to, flaws and all. Then on d-day, the avalanche of knowledge fell upon me in one horrific moment, that his gross entitlement, willingness to lie, and selfishness were far deeper and wider than I had realized…well. I felt such a fool.
Gisèle, I hope that you read this. I hope that you fall into the arms of a community that sees you, and hears you, and welcomes you as you heal. Thank you for your voice.
Yes, you resign yourself to nibbling away on a little shit sandwich as your lot in life, to make the best of it and get on — and then the not-great person who’s benefited from your accommodations skips out and leaves you with a jumbo shit sandwich.
It’s a horrifying story.
The shame of it is that many men who have seen the news etc will express horror but won’t connect it to their own behaviour towards women and realise they are really no better.
The disrespect most of us endured for years , the unwanted touching and coercive sex, the sight of my husband wearing a white ribbon in support of women who suffer at the hands of violent men – one must keep up appearances after all.
No matter the level of behaviour, it’s all revolting and traumatising when you realise just who you’ve been sleeping next to all these years- and what may have happened that you’re still unaware of.
This! “The disrespect most of us endured for years, the unwanted touching and coercive sex,”. So true for too many of us and it IS horrific. I am forever changed after more than 25 years of it. If I hadn’t discovered my h’s 3-year double life and got out, I might’ve continued on a trajectory towards soul death because of it.
I heard an expression in South America for this idea: “Sólo disparo a ratones, no a elefantes” or “I only shoot mice, not elephants.” The context was mocking people who let themselves off the hook for “minor,” cog-in-the-wheel participation in politically evil systems. I think it applies quite easily to domestic abusers who, even if they’re “only” committing emotional abuse, are still actively supporting an abusive system. It all keeps the bar in hell and damages generations.
And the fact that so many of us didn’t even realise what our Xs were doing WAS a form of abuse makes it easier for men who abuse women covertly and insidiously to trivialise end even deny the abuse they’re perpetrating!
But all it takes for this sort of evil to pervade and spread is that “good” men do sweet feck all about it!
The late Evan Stark published a paper about how, while stiffer criminal penalties for domestic assault significantly reduced rates of assaultive domestic violence and domestic murder, this predictably led to a steep statistical increase in extreme emotional abuse and coercive control which even victims of chronic direct violence report is more devastating and paralyzing. In short, just like viruses keeping pace with human immune defenses by mutating to evade them, it seems batterers adjust their methods of sexual and psychological control in order to evade shifts in criminal consequences.
Which just goes to show, they know exactly what they’re doing and they do it because they can, and as much and exactly what they think they can get away with! It’s not that they lack self-control, have anger problems or anything like that. It’s just plain old wilful badness!
Oh shit, it seems the shift from violence to increased coercive control may have replaced domestic homicide with an increase in victim suicide. https://news.npcc.police.uk/releases/report-reveals-scale-of-domestic-homicide-and-suicides-by-victims-of-domestic-abuse
Actively supporting an abusive system – yes!!
My son’s paedeatrician (understandably not knowing the full story but that he cheated) said to me “why don’t you try marriage counselling”. I said “because everything that person is I stand against”.
She said no more. It is hard to describe the disgust one can have for another human who represents everything you despise.
Ahh, ain’t love grand…
It seems perfectly natural that individual people, like entire nations, reserve worse punishments and more hatred for traitors than they do enemy combatants.
Thanks for posting this sombre story Chump Lady. Sure, it’s not your classic infidelity but it’s the secret sexual basement that so many of us here had to survive through. We really need to start talking about this more. In my case, I was blamed for not wanting to essentially be raped. My ex FW had “needs” to have rough sex and hurt submissive women. After 25 years together and D-day hit, he said the problem had been my “vanilla” sex, so he had to go out there and get it elsewhere, generally paying sex workers top dollar to do whatever he wanted to them. He also had a little pool of very strange people around him, and he ended up living with one of them. He chided me for being boring and straight and not into the cool kink world they were into. Their kink was violence. I happened upon some of his equipment one day when I was in the process of kicking him out. I was shocked and horrified at what I saw. It took me about 4 years of healing from the shock to realise that I was grateful that he’d never actually inflicted it on me.
I’ve been closely watching the Polkinghorne case in New Zealand. In a nutshell, a meth smoking, sex addict who made his wife do a lot of sexual things with other people she didn’t want to do. He demanded daily sex from her in addition to his cheating. He says she committed suicide, the state said he murdered her. He was busy spending all of his time and efforts on his recent girlfriend – a sex worker in Australia. He claims his wife was depressed and drank too much. The state prosecutors say he killed her to get her out of the way so he could just carry on with the other women and do his drugs. He’s a 70ish year old eye doctor with a lot of wealth. The jury is about to decide his fate.
Double lives have victims. Some like me got off lightly. I feel so, so distressed by these two recent cases. God bless you Gisele, and RIP dear Pauline Hanna.
I hadn’t heard about the NZ case either! I have no words except what a shame that NZ is , I suspect, just as criminally lenient with the likes of him as the UK and Ireland are!
That poor woman, she had no one!
God bless this woman. She is so so brave! I have lived in France for over 30 years and just learned on Friday that I am now French. She makes me proud! And now that I am French I will be up there manning the barricades! Blessings on you Gisèle!
I am so so angry that this poor woman had to deal with this. Seriously, I am so fired up. I was always very political but now it’s game on!
Attie you are inspirational — putting your new citizenship to instant activism and a survivor of abuse yourself — just wow!
Gisele is a hero and so are you ❤️
Hewitt also wrote, “…the men in question often nurture outward reputations in which they’re upstanding pillars of the community. I don’t think this is an accident. I think that these men are driven to create and intensify those virtuous personae, precisely to offset the depraved behaviour they’re getting up to in private. They need to have a sense of themselves as ‘good people’ – at least in part – so that they’re not crushed by guilt for the bad things they’re doing. But this is incredibly psychologically harmful, because it creates a splitting in personality, in which there’s an outward saintly selfhood concealing a secret bad self…. The worse the acts are that they’re committing in secret, the more they need to exaggerate and show off their apparent public virtue. And, to further assuage guilt, it also becomes necessary for these men to demonise their wives even further than they’re already doing. Those wives often reside at the heart of these men’s public sense of themselves as virtuous ‘family men’, ‘kind and gentle fathers and husbands’, but those men need to develop a belief that, in secret, their wives are evil and fully deserving of the hatred that is being inflicted on them. And so a psychological about-turn happens, in which men come to believe that it’s their wives – not them – who are really harbouring secretly evil selves, which justifies their own behaviour.”
This is pure evil.on display, horrific yet banal.in how it was perceived by the participants in the torture of this poor woman as a perfectly acceptable way to conduct yourself in seeking sexual gratification from an inert, defenseless human being. And I bet every one of these monsters strove to keep the illusion and facade of respectability even as they destroyed the physical and mental health of.Madame Pelicot.
In many ways this horrible story of extreme abuse and betrayal is the bookend to the married .men who comport themselves with a similar, egregious sense of entitlement when pursuing extramarital sexual.opportunities with single or married women, especially when said women are under their tutelage or authority. My brother wss one such entitled alpha male.who had multiple affairs across three continents, which only came to a screeching halt when he suffered a major stroke. My wife’s affair partner ( a senior hospital surgical resident)was also a persistent and persuasive philqnderer/player who bonked his way through countless women without a thought about the damage he was causing to many marriages, relationships and lives. He had the power, privilege and a deep rooted sense of entitlement that overrode all other considerations.
Oh and the deep hypocrisy, keeping up that so important image as a major financial supporter of his church, senior advisor to the minister, marriage counselor to young couples and leader of Bible study groups!
You.pull.off the mask and what you see in these men isworthy.of a Stephen King horror novel.
Yes, Goodfriend! This happened to me. My husband has painted such a terrible portrait of me to our circle, all completely insane and inverted, he is confessing to something evil by the outrageousness of his lies about me. But as everyone here knows, the pain comes when the people you know are so ready to believe them. I’ve been rejected by people who’ve known me since I was a child, whom I treated with love my entire life, who chose to believe lies about me with no evidence.
I treated my husband with unstinting love and support and generosity our entire marriage, too.
“The worse the acts are that they’re committing in secret, the more they need to exaggerate and show off their apparent public virtue.” — 100% My husband completely. I do not know about his secret basement, he has kept it hidden, nor do I want to know, I just want to be rid of him. All I glean, I glean from projection.
Just a horrible, horrible story for what it says about men. We live and sleep beside, and trust in, rapists.
This always makes me wonder what men’s mothers know about their sons. It seems as the mothers of sons all think theirs, exceptionally, would never do this. Or do mothers of sons recognize this latent side in their sons, and try to stamp it out?
My X’s mother was always quite distant and even a bit cool with the X! She and his late father only bothered with him when they wanted something and I used to get so cross about it and say that they treated him like their unpaid odd-job man! Only once in 15 years did she send him a birthday card and the only present she ever gave him for either birthday or Christmas was the 50 Euro note she put in with that one birthday card! Every year apart from that one, they never even so much as texted him to say Happy Birthday or Christmas, never mind give him a card and a present! Once the father died I hoped she’d warm up to X and start treating him like a son but she didn’t! I used to feel so bad for him, but now I wonder did she sense something wrong in him long, long before I found out about it? I thought she’d be against me because he had to go and live with her after I kicked him out but apparently not! Apparently she blamed me kicking him out entirely on him and his intolerable behaviour because apparently, they, herself and his nephews who live with her, got an even worse version of him than I’d been getting!
He has a GF now, has since at least the Spring as far as I know, and I suspect he’s living with her now in the nearby city! Best of luck to the woman is all I can say, although my son has seen her at closer quarters than I have and reckons she’s rough and maybe as bad, or even worse than X is!
Oh well….!
Best of luck getting out as quickly and cleanly as you can.
My ex was ordered to write an HONEST letter of apology to then-tween as a condition of resuming contact.
It took four months for his to come up with a statement that he had been giving financial advice and job references to help a work colleague find employment/manage finances.
He was sending tens of thousands of dollars to a stranger he met on a dating site in exchange for pornographic pictures. Pictures and texts that he tried to make sure tween would see by leaving them literally everywhere tween sat–at the dining room table, tween’s TV chair, next to tween’s toilet. No apologies for that, or for other physical and mental abuse.
He had to rewrite the letter, but never really apologized. Per court order, he now has no contact.
I so much wonder about that behavior. I had a chump friend years ago when our children were in grade school. Her FW would leave out those free magazines (Idk if they exist anymore what with the internet) where sex workers would place ads, some with photos. This “man” would write reviews of the women next to their ads (eg “she’s super hot and willing”) and remind himself to call her again. He would leave these magazines around the house, making no attempt at a secret. Additionally he would bring his kids along to the non-sex worker AP’s house and sit them in front of the toob for Saturday morning cartoons while he and the mistress took care of business in another room. What is up with deliberately exposing young children to these things? I just can’t figure it out.
It’s a very sneaky, underhand form of CSA I think, and I am baffled as to why it’s not treated as the crime it is! Poor children, having a father so dirty must be a horrible burden to bear for them!
They are monsters. It’s a way of sexually abusing children without putting a hand on them. It’s legal and won’t be punished.
I’m betting that FWs who do this also expose their kids to porn. They “accidentally” leave it on the family computer. Pure evil.
He did it precisely because tween male was the one person he thought he could impress at the time. He wrote to the catfisher that he couldn’t wait until he could walk around town with her on his arm, so everyone would be in awe that he had what it took to get a hot babe. He told her he was dying to tell his friends, therapist and neighbors about her, but they wouldn’t understand why she was so attracted to him so quickly and ready to marry him after two months of emails and just a one-minute, unintelligible phone call that he said sounded like a man. (Hint: it was the money, honey, and you were scammed.) He had ED and was taking pills, had lost a succession of jobs for years, was lying on his resume and to everyone he knew about fake accomplishments he’d never earned (international awards and degrees he never even applied for) and was desperate to appear to be virile and attractive.
It took me less than 10 minutes to prove he’d been catfished in a romance scam. To compensate, he started wining and dining a succession of women and taking them on lavish vacations. After just three dates with one woman who was more than 35 years younger, he called tween and introduced her as his new mom She dumped him on the fourth date.
Now he says he wasn’t in his right mind. Duh.
“Now he says he wasn’t in his right mind. Duh.” Too bad! No backsies!
Oh Lordy! GoodFriend it sounds like you’ve been through the wringer with your FW. I hope he is merely a distant memory for you.
Thank you for your good wishes, GoodFriend.I am sorry your ex did that to your child, that is really disordered and upsetting, my god.
When my ex first abandoned us and then declared he wanted to move back in, I told him he had to write a letter that showed accountability and that apologized. I remember it took him about five days to come back with what was a four-page letter, and he appeared to find it agonizingly difficult to write those words. He managed it, ultimately — but it didn’t stick. It was the only time there was accountability on his part. It was fleeting, a glimmer of his until-then primary personality. What I observed was a person experiencing an internal struggle between two personalities. His “good” persona was snuffed out,completely eclipsed by the “bad” — or let’s call it what it is, “evil” — persona.
People can scoff, but I saw it with my own eyes. Definitely a struggle between two forces within one human body.
My mom used to call my dad’s behavior “Jekyll and Hyde.” She never knew who she was dealing with…until she decided to leave, get divorced, and go no contact.
Yes, absolutely, that is the most apt reference to describe the phenomenon. I told all the therapists/counselors we saw in the early days of the rupture that he was like Jekyll and Hyde, not one picked up on it, to my dismay.
I can tell you that in my marriage, Dr Hyde eventually took over completely. So your mom made the right decision.
Correction: *Mr.* Hyde, of course, not “Dr.”.
I don’t scoff because that was my experience as well. I know that my ex-FW was a person who made his own choices and was responsible for his own behavior, but there was something about his mistress that brought out his dark side. I was part of the “oh no, a brain tumor or aneurysm has changed his personality” entourage. But at one point when I confronted him about how cruel and enraged he had become, begging him to get to a doctor for a brain scan, he said to me “I am more me now then I have ever been in my life.” He not only showed me his true self, but confirmed it verbally. I had married a cruel, angry, and selfish arsehole. And I had no idea.
Best Thing, it’s been a few days since I read your comment, and “I am more me now than I have ever been in my life” is haunting me. Whew.
Chumpty D- Apparently it is haunting me as well, because it is several days later, and this morning I woke up with the thought in my head that OMG! Without my old FW and the circumstances of my old life – I have built a far better life on my own – I can honestly say “I am more me now than I have ever been in my life” !!!!! It’s a great feeling, and if FW feels at peace with his disordered
“fiancee” then good for them both, go and be and do. I’m thinking it’s finally Tuesday!
ah! wise words, Best Thing, thanks (:
I also had no idea. Same thing happened to Norah Ephron and Madeleine Albright. And apparently millions of others!!
I’ve been rejected by people who’ve known me since I was a child, whom I treated with love my entire life, who chose to believe lies about me with no evidence.
Chumpty, can you show the doubters the four page letter he wrote?
When I told friends I had evidence of the money and credit cards he’d sent, his requests for porn, and his offer to live together, they didn’t believe me, until I showed them proof–printouts of his emails. Some of them (his long-time work colleagues) still dropped me anyway, but it made a real difference with a few others. Since they knew he’d lied about himself, I hoped they’d consider that he’d also lied about me.
You’ve lost people you’ve known since childhood. Maybe they aren’t worth having back in your life, but you may want to set the record straight with them anyway, and showing them his letter might do that.
Hi, thank you so much for trying to help. He pre-emptively smeared me so effectively that they do not engage with me at all. My friend who studied ballet with me when we were fourteen and she was boarded with my family, whom I supported through her divorce and whom I took the train from NYC to Montreal in January to attend her mother’s funeral, who met my ex maybe four times — she attacked me to support him, based on something he told her!!! It’s so bonkers. He is an extremely gifted manipulator.
But yeah, maybe I should just send the letter to them, who knows, maybe they’ll read it. He confessed everything in his own hand.
What my experience of people completely irrationally siding with him has forced me to come to grips with, in the most immediate, personal way, is that facts don’t matter.
People chose to not believe me and side with him, based on allegations contrary to everything they had seen and lived, for a gardenful of reasons, from laziness or grievances or guilt or whatever. My bad luck was to have someone who is particularly skilled at sniffing out each person’s vulnerability and exploiting it. It’s what he does for a living, and he’s good at it.
Am I better off without them? Sort of. It’s good to slough off a few friends, but for me it has been a wholesale amputation of my support network. The sheer number of betrayals and people who just stopped communicating has been an existential shock.
I had the same experience Chumpty. The preemptive smear campaign was set by the cheater a long time before I knew anything was slightly wrong in my marriage. It is devastating. I lost my whole social network too, including best friend couple. So painful. Nightmare. This kind of betrayal goes very deep. Hugs to you in solidarity.
Right back at you, Samsara! Thank you for sharing that.
Lots of betrayals and disappearances here too, Chumpty. Existential shock is a good way to describe it.
I like Goodfriend’s advice to share the letter. Even if you don’t want them back in your life- I don’t want my friends’ back who didn’t support me- there is great power in getting THE TRUTH out there to the world. Do it in any way you can. You deserve that power even if you don’t want them back.
Guys thank you! The thing is, arrrgh, sharing the note would corroborate his completely made-up story that he tried to come back and I wouldn’t let him…!! In reality, I went over to his secret AirBNB a few days later and he was the worst I’d seen him…
That total cutoff must be so painful for you. Some chumps here are so fortunate to retain a significant numbers of friends and family. Cheaters compound their betrayal exponentially when they deliberately turn our social circles and support systems against us.
I later learned that FW systematically invited everyone we knew out to lunch or dinner, one or two at a time, to spin his story. I too lost almost everyone. Years later I am still struggling to rebuild.
Only a few people took me up on seeing the proof, but I assume they told others, and I hope it got back to him and he stopped badmouthing me.
If you have an attorney, you might want to check first before sharing his letter, and it might be better for you legally to show it (if they’re willing) rather than to send it.
The lies attacking us are so devastating, especially when people who know and should believe us choose to go along with the cheater. It’s another measure of lack of character.
Yes, same here, he systematically met with them all!! Or called them, if they were too far away.
Haven’t had an attorney for years, because of financial/litigation post separation abuse.
You can get free legal advice for this. Look into it. Truth is power and you deserve your truth and power back.
Hi New Here, I’ve applied to pretty much every free legal advice organization I qualifed for in my region in the past 3+ years.
At its core, infidelity is a conspiracy to destroy a life.
It is a deliberate choice between at least two people to plot and devalue and steal and lie while the chump is struggling to make sense of the fallout. And society tells the chump to give more – more understanding, more support, more affection and more chances.
The chump is expected to give the very life force they’ve been denied.
Yes, my husband told me when he left that he “wanted to erase me”. Did not help me sleep better at night.
Yes, and life force that the cheat’s been sucking out of you for so long that at the end, you’re nearly moribund or suicidal, or at least, thinking you’d be better off dead like I was!
They want to squeeze the very last drops of juice out of us, the cheats and the cheating enablers and excusers, don’t they? Shem on the lot of ’em!
God bless you Gisele. You are unspeakably brave and you are helping untold others by putting a human face to this dreadful story. Bless you. 💕💕🙏
I fervently hope that her perpetrator ex-husband and his co-perpetrators are heavily sentenced as a societal gesture to make clear that this conduct is transgressive.
How many are date raped, because they are a ‘thing’, a ‘pleasure toy’ in someone’s mind.
It’s impossible to love, like or regard someone and simultaneously treat them like a ‘pleasure toy’.
At that point they have lost their humanity, their three dimensions even, in the perpetrator’s eyes. And yes, they might even be detested on some level.
Consent. Consent. Consent.
That is the key issue isn’t it.
How can any sexual act, conducted without consent be constructed as anything other than a violation?
There are analogous themes to infidelity.
Infidelity ALWAYS happens in the absence of consent.
Infidelity is done ‘to’ the chump.
Infidelity is violating.
I feel repulsed and I feel that my body’s been violated, even now, when I think of FW being intimate with my body, having been intimate with AP, without my knowledge.
If I had known of his infidelity, I would never have provided my consent to share my body with him.
Puerile Perel has quite the task on her hands trying to dodge the foundational question of lack of consent when talking about infidelity.
For me, that is everything.
“Puerile Perel has quite the task on her hands trying to dodge the foundational question of lack of consent when talking about infidelity.”
Amen. A supporter of Perel might ask “how are you dragging Perel and infidelity into this?” Perel contributes to a culture of rape by creating an intellectual edifice that protects nonconsensual sexual activity. Heck, she doesn’t excuse it – she promotes it as healing.
Apparently this wasn’t this twats first brush with the law. Huge kudos to the security guard that caught him filming up women’s skirts and brought him to the attention of the law!
It seems that is occasionally a way that very evil criminals are caught; do you remember how they caught Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper? The traffic squad pulled him over for something to do with his car or his driving or something wasn’t it?
Up until then, they were being driven insane trying to find out who the Ripper was and simple traffic stop is what caught him!
Preach, Tracy. Gisele is a badass. The mightiness overwhelms me.
On behalf of my born gender: I apologize. This is horrifying and I hope there is justice.
Jeff, you’re not responsible for all men, just as I’m not responsible for all women. If we walk with integrity, we don’t need to apologize for those that don’t.
You didn’t do it so you have nothing for which to apologize!
But if you witness a man hassling or belittling a woman (well, anyone really) please step up and tell him that what he’s doing is wrong. Even if she isn’t there to witness it.
I’ve been lucky to not have to call out a friend for physically cheating on their spouse, but I have called out other forms of duplicity. It did end one friendship but I viewed that as a win once I realized it was NOT a one-off.
NoShit you have hit the nail on the head! Honorable men do not need to apologize for the behavior of the dishonorable ones, but should also not tolerate the elbow-ribbing culture of disrespect and misogyny. Imagine if when a woman (or as you say “well, anyone really”) is being harassed or worse if all good men and women would stand with the victim, and let the offender know that they will not be tolerated. There are far more many decent people out there than disturbed people, but standing up to one by yourself is incredibly difficult and scary. If decent people banded together, whether in the workplace, the subway, within a family, etc. and united for good against evil, imagine what a better world we would have. Drive the snakes back under the rock from whence they came! Hopefully this is what will happen with Mme Gisele in her court case.
You don’t need to apologize!
My ex-husband maintained a secret sexual life in the form of fetish cross-dressing dressed up as transgederism, in which he was aided, abetted, urged on, by a former student with whom he had long been entangled in a relationship that crossed the line from student-professor. Once he was sufficiently ginned up by the pink fog of feminizing, something that those who live with such men recognize as addictive, in that it escalates over time, with the addict’s need to take it ever further to achieve the same sexual high. His cross-dressing fetish was accompanied with an urge to hurt and mutilate himself, and a desire for others to do so as well. In fact, it was this desire to be “punished,” as he put it, that led him finally to disclose all this to me.
Rachel Hewitt hits the nail on the head when she says discovery (or disclosure) is devastating on all fronts, “sabotaging the foundations of every aspect” of your life. To her everlasting credit, Chump Lady understands this, and helps us, the victim-chumps of our spouses, the RCC, and the Esther Perel-types who normalize such devastation.
That’s exactly the story of my first husband! Except in this case, he was encouraged by a friend/colleague who was unhappily deeply closeted and was cheating on his own wife with a series of rent boys. It started as cross-dressing and progressed to his declaration that he was a trans woman and a lesbian – at which point I divorced him – and eventually surgery. He then spent a couple of years hanging out in lesbian clubs (where, by the way, they wanted nothing to do with him) and then decided that he was male after all. He spent the rest of his life chugging testosterone at mega-doses in an effort to reverse all the estrogenic effects and that’s what I think caused the stroke that eventually did him in (along with the alcoholism, but that’s another story). In retrospect, it seems similar to what you said – a desire to be punished that only increased over time. Not much comfort to me who had to live through all the unpleasantness (and internalized much of it) but at least that chapter is over.
The husband has confessed, and testified that all 50 men charged with rape, and the 30 more who are still unidentified, knew they his wife was unwilling and that they were being filmed. The alleged rapists want us to believe they, and their families, are the victims, because some of their job categories, i.e. “municipal worker” are in the media.
Pelicot testified that he was a great husband for 40 years and a bad one only for 10.
“When asked about his marriage to Gisèle, Mr Pelicot said he considered suicide when he found out she was having an affair. Throughout his testimony on Tuesday morning, Mr Pelicot repeatedly assured the court that he never “hated” his wife and was in fact “crazy about [her]… I loved her immensely and I still do.”
“Referring to the 50 co-defendants who are accused of raping his now ex-wife Gisèle, Mr Pelicot said: “I am a rapist like the others in this room.”
“They all knew, they cannot say the contrary,” he said. Only 15 of the 50 defendants admit rape, with most saying they only took part in sexual acts….
….But Mr Pelicot said the only person he ever “manipulated” was his wife, and also said that the men must have known they were being filmed: “There was a tripod and a screen attached to it, everyone could see it as soon as they walked into the room.” Pelicot said he wanted to prove that his wife “was a victim and not an accomplice. To prove that everything happened without her knowledge. I’m aware many [defendants] have disputed this.” https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2kdd3n7yqo
I wondered what we knew about the alleged rapists. Not a lot, other than the age range and a few job categories. https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/gisele-pelicot-men-accused-rape-1.7324328 Yet not even their type of employment should be released, according to their lawyers.
Defence Lawyers In France Rape Trial Say ID Leaks Threatening Families
By AFP – Agence France Presse September 9, 2024
“Lawyers defending men accused in a mass rape trial in southern France said on Monday they would be filing legal complaints over internet users leaking their clients’ personal information and thus endangering their families…
…..“Personal information of the accused — their identity, surname, name, profession and sometimes even pictures taken inside the courtroom — have been shared on social media, in defiance of the basic rules of our law,” said lawyer Isabelle Crepin-Dehaene, representing all their attorneys.
“Children of defendants have been singled out at school. Wives and family members have been insulted. Defendants have received malicious phone calls, with attempts to break into their home,” she added.
“From this week, their different lawyers will file around 15 legal complaints with the relevant regional prosecutors’ offices and several more will follow in the coming weeks,” she said.
…..Eighteen of the 51 accused are in custody, including Dominique Pelicot, while 32 other defendants are attending the trial as free men.
The last one, still at large, will be judged in absentia.
Most face up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape.”
https://www.barrons.com/news/defence-lawyers-in-france-rape-trial-say-id-leaks-threatening-families-c2d7feb3
If I lived near that community, I would want to know who has been accused. They were identified by police, so at the very least, they participated in a website devoted to rape. As a woman and a parent, I’d want to know the identities of these men in my community.
The men are coming to trial in face masks and hoodies to protect their identities. But Gisèle Pelicot not only allowed her name to be used, she also requested a public trial. That means the neighbors, coworkers and other members of the small and neighboring communities can see just who these men are.
Many women are outraged, but some men are not, per Andrew Harding in this article.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvpd7zyprdo After reading it, I hope the community finds a new caterer and mayor.
“Honestly, no-one here gives a damn,” said a local caterer, Evan Tuvignon, leaning on his shop counter and suggesting that people were fed up with the whole case.
Mazan’s 74-year-old mayor, Louis Bonnet,”… sought to play down those tensions, arguing that most of the alleged rapists came from other villages and seeking to frame the Pelicots as outsiders who hadn’t lived there long….
“People here say ‘no one was killed’. It would have been much worse if [Pelicot] had killed his wife. But that didn’t happen in this case,” Bonnet said.
Then he went on to address Gisèle Pelicot’s experiences.
“She’ll have trouble getting back on her feet again for sure,” he agreed, but suggested her rapes were less troubling than those of another victim in the nearby town of Carpentras who “was conscious when she was raped… and will carry the physical and mental trauma for a long time, which is even more serious”.
We don’t do pain or trauma Olympics, but this man is implying that because a victim is unconscious, her physical and mental trauma are less serious and not long-lasting.
He goes on to say, “When there are kids involved, or women killed, then that’s very serious because there’s no way back. In this case, the family will have to rebuild itself. It will be hard. But they’re not dead, so they can still do it.”
There was, in fact, a child involved. Police found semi-nude photos of Pelicot’s then-minor daughter with his other photos, He was initially arrested for illegally taking photos under other female victims’ skirts and dresses.
For over a decade, the victim’s husband–the man she trusted– repeatedly drugged her unconscious, and that alone caused numerous serious medical problems. She also contracted STIs because her rapists did not use condoms. She lives with the knowledge that the man she loved brought other men–some strangers, others possibly men she knew– to violate her this way for more than a decade. Mayor Bonnet’s comments are outrageous. Is he saying that since nobody was killed, it’s not serious?
Minimizing being raped by 50 men as less brutal than another rape? Saying no-one gives a damn?! This brutal world. I don’t know how many of you saw the rape of the detainee by IDF soldiers, that was then broadcast and defended by lawmakers as something they *should* do. It’s about power and the thrill of degrading another human. The horrible thing is, if the person weren’t an actual feeling human, there would be no thrill in treating them like a rape-toy while other bad boys watch.
Another connection we can make to infidelity is that most of the men who raped Gisèle Pélicot probably had a front-facing partner, wife or girlfriend to whom they were not mentioning their activities.
That’s typical of people who have been up to the same skulduggery to say such things- cowards who are scared they’ll be busted too.
Disgusting- I hope none have daughters -or sons to spread their poison to.
The mayor’s argument is “she should be happy she’s not dead”? What in God’s name is wrong with people?
Do you recall Tracy’s story on CN about that French Canadian telling her American friend that we were so uptight in this country,NOT ACCEPTING across the board,men’s natural inclination to cheat on their marriage and so EVERYONE HAS A MISTRESSES in France ie Europe.? So if everyone is happily cheating, why are men lining up for this kind of absolute trash in raping an unconscious woman????? If all their needs are met with 2nd and 3rd lives why this disgusting side line? There is no basement too deep for the offenses against woman to continue. Thank you Tracy CN and Giselle. What COURAGE
this case is difficult to comprehend.
i think what comes first to my mind is how many men view women as inferior, and others hate us. but in this case, Gisele was viewed/treated as a receptacle.
i view this behaviour as evil.
i will never know the extent of my X’s secret basement, nor do i wish to know. it’s difficult to talk about but it’s probably good to get out in the open, because i think many chumps find themselves in rough water. after 30 years of marriage, i heard “you’re boring, vanilla” and “you don’t know how to live” and “i need to feel fully alive.” then he started talking about wanting anal sex and airplay, which is code for choking. when i refused, the mask slipped and he was openly contemptuous.
it was and is terrifying that my X viewed me in hateful ways. 30 years. i did not know him. i’ve gotta be honest, it’s unlikely that i will trust another man again.
I feel overwhelmed by Gisele Pelicot’s extraordinary courage.
The wives and partners of the 51+ men who raped her must be discovering the sickening secret sexual basements of their husbands and boyfriends.
My heart goes out to them.
Men aged from 26 – 74 years old.
I’m so glad you wrote this article Tracy and thank you so much for sharing Rachel Hewitt’s piece. When she says that –
“some men literally get off on secretly hating and sabotaging their wives. “
-that is absolutely my experience. Cheating on us is part of that.
ChumpNation yet again shows the foolishness of those recent New York Times Articles.
This is what we’re dealing with. This is the sickening, devastating reality.
Wishing Gisele Pelicot wave after wave of strength and support.
This is a sickening story and I can’t commend her enough for further putting not only herself but her children out there. It’s hard enough to accept any type of betrayal and abuse, but when you go public your exposing yourself and everyone you love to judge. I try very hard to find ways to talk about this without further hurting my kids. Who wants everyone to know you are a wife or child or grandchild of someone that clearly doesn’t care about you.
I cant imagine this level of abuse and betrayal. Im still wrapping my head around a weak man that used bad escape mechanisms of lying and cheating rather than get help. That’s enough to twist your mind into inedible pretzels. We have to continue to find ways to talk about all secret lives and betrayal without it being twisted. Without further feeling embarrassed or further traumatizing everyone we love.
Thats what this blog does and I love the last statement. Maybe thats what we need to start putting out there. “La honte doit changer de camp,” or “Shame must change sides.”
Jesus Christ this is awful. How do men fix this? I’m not being glib – I genuinely want to know how male culture changes on this issue? I could point to 1,000 examples in the United States general election in the past month alone about the messages supporting toxic masculinity and rape culture – that men, in order to be men, must be dominant, aggressive, and uncaring. Elon Musk just “offered” to impregnate Taylor Swift for Christ’s sake.
I could write 10,000 words in this post about cultural observations and how our modern times have created this environment, and then would have to crumple it up and throw it in the trash, since this “environment” has existed since the dawn of fucking time. I’m so tired of it.
It is not overblown to rope Perel into this, or to proclaim this as some sort of horrific outlier when something like 25% of women will experience some form of sexual assault or rape in their life. Perel has added her brick to the wall of normalizing sexual entitlement and downright lauding nonconsensual sexual pursuits. Hell, she’s added about 1,000 bricks.
The culture that we live in is built by the thousands of bricks laid, by the statements we make, by the “jokes” that we chuckle at uncomfortably, by the social media posts we make or repost, by the stories we ignore, and by the victims we shame.
Changing the camp of shame, indeed. What a powerful statement. Perel would have the victims of infidelity shamed for their failure to meet the needs of the perpetrator. Shame needs to find another place to live.
Perel and those idiots from the NY Times- I bet they won’t have the spine to weigh in on this one.
“She left the house with two suitcases, “all that was left for me of 50 years of life together”. Since then, “I no longer have an identity … I don’t know if I’ll ever rebuild myself,” she said.” This is 100 percent relevant. Yes, it’s extreme, but as things like coersive control are being introduced into legislation, we are beginning to understand that we are, as the female half of the nation, perpetually brainwashed. As Tracy said, the men here who are abused by their cheating wives are embraced here and thier abuse is 100 percent equal to the women here, but misogyny is real. And as Manguso wrote in her novel Liars, it is a matter of degree. Cheating lying destroying a family is abuse – not to the degree as this woman, but it is abuse. She also wrote, maybe men just hate women. My father loved my mother. My sons love me and are being raised by me to love women. But they are raised to understand that when I was born, my mother could not open a bank account in her name. When I turned 10, I was spanked by my friends on my birthday in front of the school, wrestled to the ground to do so. I was taken alone to the principal’s office, where alone with him he asked me, what did you do to make them do that? It is one of my earliest childhood memories. We are not equals. In many states, our bodies are controlled by the state, our uteruses are policed by the state, basically owned by the state. God bless this woman for going public.
I am so sorry you experienced that brutality (compounded by the principal!) at age 10. Really sad to read of this. I had some similar experiences as a child, and they leave a painful mark.
This is horrifying beyond words. I hope and pray that Gisele is able to find some measure of peace. Her road to peace is unimaginable. I wish we could all hold her hand and help her through this.
As the mother of two boys, I feel obligated to consider what I can do to break the cycle of abuse. I honestly don’t know how I can best train good men. I’ve shown my teen boys this amazing video on consent https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQbei5JGiT8 but there is such an ecosystem advocating for violence against women. I’m at a loss.
Teach them empathy, teach them to be honorable.
Don’t despair SecondSelf, you’re not really at a loss. There is a primal bond between you and your boys which will override any messages they get in the larger society, including the locker room. You are their primary teacher and influencer, what you do and say matters to them, although if they are teenagers it may not seem like it now. When you are secure in yourself and your values you can guide them while at the same time respecting their individual wishes and values. At a certain age you will have no more control over their behavior but you will know you did your best to teach them well. The rest is up to them.
Yeah, the awful story of the Pelicot family has rightly been all over the news this side of the ocean. Thank you Chump Lady for the thorough review and analysis of the case.
Local commentators remarked that among those 50 to 80 men, none had the humanity to inform the victim and/or the police. None. Not a single one. I find that particularly sickening.
I take mild comfort that the FW was caught while filming under skirts. At least, there is finally action against that deplorable objectification of women. It is minor when compared to the rape of a drugged woman, but forty years ago, the FW would have been released with a slap on the wrist. At least this time the police thoroughly handled the misdemeanor, with the consequence that his victim’s ordeal came to light.
There’s hope.
You know me and my grand unified theories. I think the breeding ground for adult evil or complicity with evil is the brutalization of children, mostly via domestic abuse. As we learned from 50 years of field work and research by people like the late Evan Stark, defining abuse as only fists and firearms is part of what’s keeping humanity mired in this generational “violentization/complicity” meat grinder. If, as Stark discovered in tens of thousands of victim interviews, most battered women describe emotional and psychological abuse and coercion as the most devastating aspect of domestic abuse even more than outright assault, imagine what exposure to emotional abuse and coercion– even being in mere proximity to it– can do to generations of children. Generally for girls this means being turned into sexually subordinate lackeys to violent patriarchy and, for boys, it’s more likely to manifest as brutality and violence. But it’s all part of the same suicidal system and it behooves everyone to resist it (especially men since, statistically, they kill each other at eight times the rate men kill women and the children most likely to be killed in domestic violence situations are male infants and boys).
But resisting that trajectory isn’t so easy because that capacity is clearly an aspect of our “nature.” Our species evolved from the common ancestor of the most violent, patriarchal ape on the planet so I think we all carry that capacity for “split personality”– succumbing to ape-like mentality and behavior in playing various roles which perpetuate the system, including the political and interpersonal passivity which allows it. Journalist Chris Hedges put it well when he wrote that, if Darwin and the bible agree on anything, it’s that “original sin” and “primal nature” are the same concept. What it means is that humans can go in on direction or another and I think we know enough now about childhood adverse events to understand that emotional environment can either maximize or minimize that “ape capacity.” Though I don’t think Utopian social engineering is possible or would completely resolve this, humans do have bigger brains and free will and I think things could at least be improved by protecting children, which often requires protecting the women who mostly raise them and, in turn, would require giving women equal power in all tiers of society.
In other words, Chump Nation is on the right side of history by trying to more surgically define what constitutes intolerable abuse and violations of consent. It could sound grandiose to argue that doing this could potentially, say, reduce war and stymie the corporate aggression that’s driving climate change and dooming the planet but I honestly don’t think that’s an excessive claim. I think it’s all relevant and that, by the same token, apologists like Perel are fighting in the opposite direction by trying to keep concepts of consent and abuse as squashy and undefined as possible. Ask Gisèle Pélicot how that worked out in her experience and who benefited from it.
“Our species evolved from the common ancestor of the most violent, patriarchal ape on the planet.” I think about this often–the factor, within all this, of our being primates, with all the evils that that order of mammals carries. I love watching shows that look closely at the social life of primate groups; but then sometimes I see the horror within these groups too. (To be a female within a group of baboons ruled by a male, for example, is to be subjected to chronic domestic violence.) And with you, I do think human beings have free will, in some sense of the word, and that we have moral faculties than ideally enable us to judge and oppose the worst of our tendencies as primates.
I raised my kids to recognize that “capacity for darkness” in order to keep it in check but also to know they’re meant to use this capacity in life and death situations. I think denial of darkness can lead to loss of control or shame-based inertness, either of which can be dangerous. Consequently we acknowledge our our inner beasts but keep them on short leashes.
I honestly don’t think I carry the capacity for split personality. Maybe “we” don’t “all” carry it.
No one thinks they have that hard wiring for brutality and, for most people, it’s been so buried under layers and layers of evolved civility and affective socialized empathy (which it should be. Keep that shit buried!) that they never have to see evidence of their own Clockwork Orange ape capacity. For instance, the reason military “kill training” was instituted during Vietnam was because 40% of soldiers in WWII wouldn’t even fire their weapons in combat. But it may be about stakes. I have a feeling that, like me, you’d probably get a glimpse of that potentiality if anyone came after your kids with a hatchet.
At least I hope (to God or Darwin) my inner monkey kicks in and I’m capable of killing someone with my bare hands if my kids are ever at risk. I’m so squeamish about physical violence that I’m afraid I’d tragically hesitate. I keep meaning to enroll in a self defense course to train myself out of that but I have to find an instructor who’s particularly knowledgeable about physical limitations since my knees are super trashed from repeat sports injuries and I can’t risk another.
Her piece of shit husband also kept a file of naked pictures of his own daughter.
I don’t know what French prisons are like but I hope the guys deal with this scumbag.
Giselle has my eternal respect for her badassery.
Gisele is MIGHTY!
She has started a world-wide conversation and has exposed the secret sexual basement so many men hide. importantly, her adult children, as well as most of the world, stand with her because we all recognize the betrayal. Gisele, like ChumpLady, is shining the light of truth on lies.
We need a special yearly remembrance of Gisele and her strength.
I have been following this story and it is absolutely abhorrent, I really hope that justice is served.
I do see the misogyny out there and I confront it when I can. The way I do so is to understand where the man is at and listen, and then gently push back on what they say. A lot of it is that red pill garbage. I will also confront misandry when I see it too.
Another way I do so is by living life as authentically as possible by being a man that is honorable and lives with integrity. If I didn’t, then my message would be lost. I try and live the first and second commandments to the best of my ability. I think there are a lot of broken people out there and it saddens me.
That is how I have raised my son. With EVERYONE be honorable and have integrity. Treat women as valuable human beings with their own thoughts and feelings who deserve respect.
Thankfully, he didn’t pick up the entitled, predatory attitudes from his dad. I actually told him at one point, “YOU’D BETTER NOT, or you become an ENEMY of Mom.” No, he hates that in men as well.
I think a lot of people think a relationship will validate them and that is unhealthy, eventually everyone becomes and object, including yourself. If I cannot love myself then I cannot love other either.
Well put. I think it’s impossible to objectify others without also objectifying oneself.
Call it the dark, “karmic” side of the golden rule. In my lifetime I’ve seen quite a few bullies come to very bad ends or end up in headlined scandals to the point that, whenever I witness someone being gratuitously cruel or aggressive, I actually wince a bit imagining what life may have in store for them and how they’ll manifest that ugliness or lovelessness against themselves.
My ex was diagnosed with BPD along with NPD, and there was just no having a meaningful relationship with him. I watched him do that with people at work, church, my kids, and me. He’d mentally discard them when he didn’t need a relationship with them. He’d keep up appearances if necessary, but he was done when he said he was done.
Our kids also observed and processed this, and both wanted to discuss that with me after he left. Yes, guys, we were objects. Gee, sorry.
As the legal proceedings and threats of legal proceedings dragged on, I realized that it would only end if he found a target who stayed around. And that’s what happened. He eventually found a woman who became very devoted to him and believed his side of the story. If she breaks up with him, I imagine he will turn on her as he turned on me, and then he will look for another one. And another one…
I wonder if this could have happened to ME, is what I’m thinking. All of a sudden he wanted to have a “polyamory” marriage, to renegotiate our vows to become “monogamish” after about 30 years of marriage AFTER he started a coworker affair. He said he was ALIVE now, was awakened. Later I learned he was listening to BS from Perel and Dan Savage to justify all this but I didn’t know that at the time. I said NO to all of it. I told him he had free will to do what he wanted but I would not be a party to it. Filed for divorce which he made drag on for almost 4 years until the judge got tired of him. What if I had stayed? Could he have made me an unwilling partner to his disgusting secret sexual basement, his double life? The sweet man I loved with all my heart was a soulless monster in disguise. Poor Gisele. She never had a voice. She’s a badass to speak up. I wish her peace.
So disturbing that he drugged her! And what were the other rapists thinking? She was just meat to her husband and the men he brought in.
Mine was four years from the time my ex left until the last legal threat. What a waste of time and money if he was done with the marriage, but I guess he felt “unmasked” and had to punish me for that.
Horrifying. That poor woman! I hope that her remaining days are far better than this wreck.
It’s male privilege and the belief that they have the “right” to any sexual behavior they want because they are male. No – no – no. And that is far more common than it should be.
My marriage was already struggling when my ex retired. When he decided that the sexual basement was his retirement project, it went down in flames. Thankfully, he took off and the marriage ended. Who knows what horrors I would have experienced otherwise.
There is so much to comment on with this topic. My FW was very into privacy. We would have philosophical discussions about privacy and government surveillance. He had just finished an advanced degree in cyber computer security stuff to change gears and get into that field. I said I was for it, I had nothing to hide and if it prevents terrorism and violence and keeps our society stable and safe while allowing certain freedoms, I was for it. My FW was always against govt surveillance and upholding privacy. I would always say only people with something to hide need it child porn, terrorists. Now I know why he was so for privacy. Hard to hide your secret life with no privacy. Wish I could warn others that if they are staunch defenders of something it means they are doing it. Now I know
I have been following this horrible story, and I cannot believe what this woman has endured and the knowledge – and diseases – she has to live with for the rest of her life. I cannot imagine someone going through this. Monsters are real in this world. What is perhaps most disturbing to me is that this monster “husband” was able to find SO MANY MEN to rape his wife and that the doctors, whatever, just seemed to cover this up or have no concern for what this poor woman was presenting for symptoms especially STDS. This is not just ONE MAN – it reveals a SYSTEMIC ATTITUDE TOWARDS WOMEN – at least in that society. What she went through is unimaginable to me and her level of heroism of coming forward and openly is unparalleled. I truly would like to see the death penalty applied to all of these men, we have to get serious in the US and elsewhere about PUNISHING people who do these terrible things and I think, removing them from human society. There is no “understanding” of this. I’d bring back the guillotine for these fuckers.
I know it won’t help Madame Pelicot but I hope the prayers of millions of people around the world for her have some value and use, and that she can take some comfort in knowing that her story may help countless women who are in….I don’t know how to even term it, abuse is not enough, there really isn’t a word I can think of to describe this….horrifying situations, overcome their abusers and find some meaning and joy in life. This woman is a far bigger hero in the world than any political or military leader. I have to wonder now how many other women might be experiencing this kind of treatment – the idea that seemingly average or “normal” men might engage in coming in and raping someone’s sleeping wife is just mind blowing.
In general, this horrible story makes me reflect again that we need to STOP PSYCHO-ANALYZING or PSYCHOLOGIZING about why criminals and bad people do bad things. They do bad things because they are bad people. All of these people in this case know it is wrong to rape women. Just as others know it is wrong to steal. Or to attack people on the street. Or wipe out bank accounts. Or many other fundamentally anti-social and evil actions that hurt others. We have to stop trying to understand and fix these people and START PUNISHING THEM AGAIN. Bad people do bad things and we should punish them when they do and stop trying to find excuses or understand their victimhood, etc. Once you get to the point where you engage in behavior like this, there is no excuse or explanation. This is just evil.
It was made very clear to us when I was training to be a psychiatric nurse in the mid 80s that it is possible to be both “mad AND bad”! Mental illness and evil aren’t mutually exclusive. Just the very existence of secure mental hospitals for the criminally insane like Rampton and Broadmoor, where Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper is, prove that! It baffles me as to how the mental health professions seem to have degenerated into trying to excuse and minimise the evil deeds of the likes of him!
I am grateful for hospitals like the above-mentioned though, because unlike prison, it’s highly unlikely the extremely dangerous patients, such as Sutcliffe, in them will be ever be released. If he’d been found sane, he’d have been released on parole years ago and feck knows what he’d have managed to do before he was caught again! That said, I, like many on these 2 islands, are sick of murderers getting such light sentences and want a “life sentence” to BE life, not 20 years and out in 15 with “good behaviour”!
Yes, evil. I’ve shared before that my attorney was the first person to tell me outright that my STBX was an evil person. Not my church, not my friends, and most certainly not my STBX’s religious relatives.
But yes, as a pastor friend of mine at another church likes to say, there are wolves in the pews, so BEWARE.
I think to acknowledge evil is to see the elephant in the room, and to see the elephant means we have to acknowledge that there may be morals and ethics. And doing so such may lead to uncomfortable conversations, so it’s easier to try and understand and find shift blame to something else.
Thank you Tracy for picking up this story. Over here in Europe it’s all over the news. Gisèle is a hero. Reading the horrific stories I wonder: can I ever trust again? These “normal” guys queuing up for this barbarous crime – incomprehensible. How many disordered men are out there? How to recognize them? I’d rather stay single.
The weekend before last, I went to the funeral of a guy who had pursued me for several years. He had too many red flags. I had to say, “No means no. Always!” And yet there he was at a wedding just a few weeks before he died, giving me a full bear hug without asking. I excused myself immediately and ensured that I had friends on either side of me at the reception.
But yes, his family had to go through his house to make arrangements and deal with the financials. It was an unbelievable horror on many fronts. He had a lot of secrets, more than anyone knew.
Something in you must have sensed that he was a wrong ‘un! We should always take such feelings deadly seriously! They can save us from unspeakable horrors!
Wow.
In addition to everything that has rightfully been pointed out about how jarringly common these men must be for so many to exist in such a small area, is the additional fact that these men were fine with doing all of this with a witness and even a camera there! This fact takes something that already exceeds all description even further. I mean, for any one of them to do this privately and on their own is raw evil. But it would have some distant connection to the realm of “reality” if the perpetrator displayed some concern about consequences and kept it all hidden. These men literally did this with a stranger as a witness! Wouldn’t that represent a smaller subset of the total who would be willing to do this if they could do so alone, without a camera and communicating with a witness? How big is THAT number?
I dread to think! It almost makes me wish I could read minds, but then I’m hugely grateful I can’t because what I would find out would haunt me and maybe even break me! I just wish men like this didn’t exist! It’s a true horror that they do!
Tracy, RIGHT ON for covering this just like knew you would. Like I also knew you’d cover slimeball Dave Grohl and I hope his wife takes him ti the cleaners. Gisele all respect and deep love for you and your future life moving on from this. Yes shame needs to change sides. I have my own story of being treated like a vending machine dispensing on̈ demand sex for a depraved addict. My days of chaos management are over. I was so lucky to find tracy early in my chump journey. Some day soon i will write to her with my mighty story which totally follows the FW playbook. Gisele is our beloved sister. Rock on in all your mightiest Gisele. We see you.
The tears on my face right now are from pure rage! Why must we share a planet with such depraved beings?!
I’m glad you’ve summoned in this piece all the apologists for secret sexual basements such as that poor excuse for a psychologist Esther Perel. Until she and her ilk come to terms with the inhumanity of those she defends and protects, popular culture will continue to shrug and assume abuse can’t happen to them and if it does it’s not that big a deal.
The depravity of these men….sick, sick & sick! My ex-husband delighted in telling me he had a Schmoopie. Why he wanted to hurt me so badly when I loved him so much still haunts me. The anger at women is all around us. I sense the undercurrent of it all the time, once you become aware of it. Viva Gisèle Pelicot! May she find peace & her ex-husband the guillotine.
Interesting add: I discussed my comment with a friend & she says she doesn’t notice anger from men, but she does notice that men disregard her now that she’s over the age of “fuckable”, meaning over 40. Yes, some rando guy said that to her. Apparently though, if you’re drugged & over 40, you’re fuckable enough to be raped though. If there’s a God, come back & make the world more beautiful & less, much less ugly, please 🙏
This horrifying story is absolutely on point for a blog about surviving and leaving cheaters. My cheater ex tried to pimp me out to all the gross friends despite my loud protests. That was like a mighty hop skip and a jump away from something like this. I can absolutely see it as cheater behavior. Not just secret sexual basements but the outright sexual sadism that so many cheaters thive upon.
*thrive upon
Gisele is a BADASS. Thank you for writing this, Tracy. I literally cannot read the part about her daughter screaming “like a wild beast” and her son vomiting without weeping. No words. Just tears.
Sean Combs arrested “freak off parties” that were allegedly recorded, & in Florida’s and there’s this https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/regional/florida/flagler-county-former-fire-rescue-employee-arrested-sexual-assault/67-3f47e5ed-a179-4b48-87f6-8843ca970036
It’s disgusting and so scary. He was allegedly recording as he molested vulnerable patients.
I agree Giséle is to be applauded
I would for sure like to see Ester Perel questioned about this. And when she says, “yes, but in this case the woman was not aware. BAM Gotcha, because guess what most, actually all chumps were unaware that they were being lied to, stolen from, subjected to disease, no one asked their permission to be involved in a threesome.
What makes a chump a chump is they were not consulted for decisions make that would alter the course of their life.
And they wonder why we choose the bear!
Talk about mighty!!
Thank you CL for covering this important story.
Gisele is a star, shining her pure truth into the darkest of secret sexual basements. We had a story very similar to this in my local area but it was not legally pursued.
And 20 years prison is not nearly long enough for any perpetrator like these French men. Noting that the husband perp spent a lot of time in the dock being a sad sausage about his own abusive childhood and upbringing. As a SA survivor myself that makes me want to throw up. My husband’s infidelity lifted the lid of Pandora’s Box of consent issues for me — I was hospitalized when I understood depth and breadth of the violation of the person closest to me. And my story is not a patch on what Gisele has endured. She is so so courageous and amazing.
In pop culture terms, there is a whiff of this in the Australian film The Dressmaker (starring Liam Hemsworth, Kate Winslet and Judy Davis who are both magnificent) where one of the main characters drugs his wife every night. Yep. In a fictional film, Karma train comes rolling though…
Anyhow, this story has shaken me. Gisele is the bravest woman and she and her children deserve every bit of love and support for what will be a daunting journey of recovery. They are all in my thoughts.
Thank you for posting Gisele’s horrific story. What a mighty survivor and global women’s rights champion she is!!! I am so grateful she has lived to testify. She is an incredible example of standing up for the human dignity of other women and girls, too, by taking her cases to trial and publicly naming her rapists.
The truth is, it is no longer enough to choose the bear. We are going to have to be the bear.
The global misogyny revealed in headlines in recent weeks has been overwhelming to say the least. R.I.P. Dr. Moumita Debnath of India. R.I.P. Ugandan Olympian Rebecca Cheptegei.
“We are going to have to be the bear”
Love this Hush!!
💯 I believe LadySpeech is the original coiner of the phrase “We are going to have to be the bear.”
https://www.ladyspeech.com/
Giséle Pelico is indeed a hero, a bona fide hero whose strength and courage boggle my mind! I think she should be awarded an honour for this but I don’t know if the French have a system like the UK does. If she was in the UK she should have been given a Peerage, made Lady Gisele or Baroness Gisele! And with her maiden name, not that foul creature’s!
As for him, the rest of those foul creatures and all men like them, they should be on their knees in gratitude that I don’t rule France because I would have them gelded! Surgically gelded and by that I mean the WHOLE lot chopped off! Then they would be locked away in a special prison I would have built just for sex offenders and made to kneel for hours a day listening to Mass and the Gospels and scriptures condemning sexual sins and Jesus warning about eternal damnation in Hell! They would be in cells with nothing but the loudspeaker in them- no bed and just a bucket for a toilet which they would have to “slop out” like prisoners used to have to do in British prisons and maybe still do in places like Wormwood Scrubs for all I know! They would never see the light of day again and if all that didn’t knock any humility and repentance into them, well, where they would end up after death would be entirely their own fault! This is not like me because I have never wished that on ANYONE, not even the X! But these foul, depraved creatures?? Justice for Gisele and her son and daughter is all I care about! If the French legal system is as sinfully lenient on sex criminals and murderers as the Irish and British legal systems are, then it hurts me to say, justice probably won’t be done, unless it’s “rough justice”!
Sorry for the rant but this has enraged and disgusted me beyond belief! Thank you CL for bringing it to our attention!
I’m a true crime fan but I was only able to delve into this one a couple of days ago. I cannot find words to describe the henious acts of these men. All I could think when I was watching this is “And they wonder why we pick the bear!”
Some insight because I was sucked into this lifestyle before I found the desperate help I needed. Let’s go out on a limb and say for s&g’s that this couple did have a rape fantasy. IF that is the case… then all parties meet before hand … one doesn’t just show up and fuck an unconscious person… that’s not how it works in a “safe” bdsm community. And that is evident in these text/message exchanges amongst the defendants.
And my disclaimer… I don’t believe there is a “safe” bdsm community. The idea is abhorrent to me now that I understand myself and how I was manipulated into all of that.
And what’s scary … if this was my ex.. I wouldn’t doubt it for a second.. and that is terrifying.
I sincerely hope the man gets some prison justice and these collaborators are equally punished.
Horrifying story.
“…malevolent secrecy….. a form of secret power……
some men get off by secretly hating and sabotaging their wives……disregarding their wives isn’t enough, such men enjoy actively hating them……….”
I survived living in this type of abuse* whilst not knowing about it,
and then I survived after discovering it.
*his secret sexual basement
Gisèle is brave to speak out testify in court. Gisèle is a hero.
I don’t know any words to describe what I think about this story. I hope that all of the perps are punished to the full extent of the law.
I didn’t see this until today – Dominique Pelicot is also a murder suspect.
Dominique Pelicot is also accused of the rape and murder of a 23-year-old estate agent in Paris in 1991. Sophie Narme was drugged, raped and stabbed in the chest.
Another estate agent, 19, was attacked in similar circumstances but escaped after fighting back. Police have said DNA extracted from blood at the scene matched his profile.