Catherine Porter (4:58)

So there is something very dark happening just under the surface of what looks like this very idyllic life.

Giselle Pellicot (5:06)

Yeah, that is right when all this is happening. Giselle is in Paris helping take care of some of her grandkids. So she only learns about it from her husband when she gets back. And he only tells her about the arrest at the store, not anything that the police have found on his electronics, because he hasn't been confronted by that either. He says he was caught, you know, filming up the skirts of women, and he's in tears. He apologizes. And she says her reaction is, I will stay with you because I've always stood beside you, and I will forgive you. And their life kind of returns to what it was beforehand.

Catherine Porter (5:48)

Mm.

Giselle Pellicot (5:51)

And then in November, the cops call her and say, do you know what your husband's been charged for? And she says, yes, I. I do. I'm, you know, I'm a little worried about it, but we're talking about it, and we're gonna work on it together. And they say, well, we'd like you to come down when he comes down for his next meeting at the police station. So that morning, they get up, they have breakfast. She says, totally normal conversation. They get in the car, they drive to the police station. He goes in to meet with some police officers. She goes in to meet with others, and they unload a bombshell to tell her that the life as she has known it is nothing. Nothing like what she thinks it is.

Catherine Porter (6:36)

What exactly do they tell her?

Giselle Pellicot (6:39)

They tell her that these videos they've been looking at on her husband's electronics are of unconscious woman being raped by him. And they believe it's her. And they believe not only that her husband has been drugging her in order to rape her, but he has been inviting strangers into their home to join him in raping her.

Catherine Porter (7:07)

An unfathomable piece of information to absorb, I have to imagine, because in this moment she is hearing that her whole life is not what she thought it was and that the man she's married to is a monster.

Giselle Pellicot (7:23)

Not only married to. She's been with him since they were teenagers. She's built her entire life around this man. She has said that she contemplated committing suicide that night because it would just be almost impossible to conceive of or to accept that the person that is your person has been so terribly betraying you.

Catherine Porter (7:51)

And just to be very clear, because it almost seems impossible to wrap one's head around this, she, if I'm intuiting from you correctly, has no inkling of any of this.

Giselle Pellicot (8:06)

No. And it's even worse than that, Michael. Remember I told you about those horrible symptoms she had been suffering? The hair loss, the weight loss, but most worrying, the blackouts. Well, in the end, you know, he was driving her to all these medical appointments, and it was the drugs he was mixing into her food and drink that were causing those symptoms in the first place.

Catherine Porter (8:32)

Wow.

Giselle Pellicot (8:33)

And in the meantime, the police are continuing their investigation. They find this hard drive in the couple's garage. And on the hard drive, they find about 20,000 photos and videos, most of them filed in a folder that Mr. Pellico had labeled abuse. And these are videos and photos of the rape scenes in that bedroom. At night, when he's inviting men over, he's cut into a separate little either video or photo to keep for himself. And through these, you know, 20,000 little data points, plus using his Skype conversations, they start tracking down these men and start arresting them in waves over many months.

Catherine Porter (9:26)

And what do we learn about these men accused of this unbelievably horrible act?

Giselle Pellicot (9:35)

Well, in the French press, they started calling them Monsieur Toulemond, Mr. Everyman, because really, when you look at them, the guys who have been charged range in age from late 20s to in their 70s. Their grandfathers, many of them are fathers themselves. They kind of span all the range of middle class or working class men in small town France. They're truck drivers or carpenters. One of them is an IT specialist in a bank. Another is a journalist. A number of them have history of drug or alcohol abuse, and some of them have their own history of sexual assault in their own lives as children. But the thing that's most remarkable about them is that they just seem like, you know, your next door neighbor. They could be your next door neighbor. And in the end, that's what really shocked a lot of French people, is that they were their next door neighbors.

Catherine Porter (10:38)

It feels like this is normally the stage in a story like this, as we know from countless MeToo episodes of this show that we have made, where despite even the unique horrors of what you're describing here, the legal system kicks in in this kind of predictable way, and the media world starts to pay attention in a way that focuses very heavily on the perpetrators, on the men and the victim. The woman here, quite understandably, remains anonymous.

Giselle Pellicot (11:15)

Right? Because most victims are offered the right to have a closed trial, and most of them take it. Now, I've covered a lot of rape trials in my career and almost never named the victim in them. I can think of only one other time because most rape victims don't want their names out there, because there's a lot of shame around rape, even though it's completely undeserved and there shouldn't be shame, but people feel culpable in some way. And so I fully expected her, as a grandmother, as someone who was not a feminist activist before, to take the regular path of deciding to have her case be private. So I wrote the first story and I was very careful. We didn't want to identify her. So she had moved out of the town and she had changed her last name to her maiden name so we could use her name as Giselle. And that's it. And then her lawyer said to me that she seemed pretty sure she was going to go public.

Catherine Porter (12:22)

Huh.

Giselle Pellicot (12:23)

And I thought, mm, you know, I just didn't believe it because I thought there's. There's no way that the 71 year old grandmother would, when she got into court, decide to use her full name and to be the face of such a traumatic series of rapes. But in the end, she decided, in a very poignant statement, that she wanted shame to change sides. She thinks there's no place for shame on the side of the victim. It should be placed on the side of the accused. And she makes this really brave and unusual decision to open her trial to the public and use her married name.

Catherine Porter (13:19)

In other words, to use her husband's name.

Giselle Pellicot (13:23)

Right. So she decides on the day that the trial opens that she will be known publicly as Giselle Peleko.

Michael Barbaro (13:51)

We'll be right back.

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Catherine Porter (15:04)

So, Kathryn, take us inside the courtroom into this trial and walk us through how this remarkable decision ends up influencing how the case plays out.

Giselle Pellicot (15:16)

Well, it meant that I could be in the courtroom together with many other journalists. I'm inside the courthouse now. It's a big room. There's a raised bench behind which five judges and two prosecutors sit, and then the very wide box that was built specially for this trial into the room. The courtroom was nothing like a courtroom I've ever reported in. It had been retrofitted for all of these accused. The defendants are starting to come in. Many have hats, sunglasses and surgical masks on to try and protect their identities. And what's really noticeable is they appear to be full range of ages, styles, looks some are very skinny and gaunt. The other I'm looking at has quite a big paunch. It's a full spectrum. And you really get that sense sitting here where I'm looking around at.

Catherine Porter (16:23)

Just.

Giselle Pellicot (16:24)

All it's like being in a bus. All sorts of people, they're sitting all around me as a journalist in the back of the room, but also right up against Madame Pellico, who is sitting against one wall. Behind her two lawyers. And in front of her and all around her are the accused men who are charged with raping her.

Catherine Porter (16:45)

From what you're saying, the scale, the enormity of the alleged crime here is just physically inescapable in the room, the.

Giselle Pellicot (16:53)

Enormity of the crime, the number of men, but also what I was saying before, just the fact that you really sort of physically and literally can see this idea of Mr. Everyman.

Catherine Porter (17:06)

And at the center of it all, quite literally the scene, is Gisele Pellicot.

Giselle Pellicot (17:12)

Yeah. Madame Pellicot comes in that first day with her two lawyers and her three children trailing behind her, and she literally embodies this idea of not being ashamed. She's so dignified.

Catherine Porter (17:29)

What do you mean?

Giselle Pellicot (17:30)

Well, you know, just imagine this would be a moment of great nervousness, of fury, of anger, of probably emotional crisis. And yet from the first moment, Madame Pellicot has been literally the picture of poise and grace and calm. She's like a classic Parisian grandmother. Her clothing is perfectly appointed, not too beautiful, but also just neat and tidy. Her hair, she's got a nice bob, her head is held high. And when she took the stand the first day, she described how her life had fallen apart that morning when she stepped into the police station and how she is making this decision that she wanted France to look at rape straight, and she thought that this was a time for the country to have a big conversation around what it means to be raped and how prevalent it is.

Catherine Porter (18:42)

She says this out, which sounds a bit to me like the words of a civil rights figure, not a French grandmother.

Giselle Pellicot (18:51)

Yeah, she says this out loud. And not only does she say this, she and her lawyers fight to have these videos play in court in the public.

Catherine Porter (19:02)

Videos of her sexual assault.

Giselle Pellicot (19:05)

Videos of her sexual assaults. Many of them, because many of the men are denying that this was rape. They basically saying they believed that she had consented to this and that they hadn't intended to rape her. And here they have, unlike most rape victims, they have evidence of what had exactly happened in that room. They have videos.

Catherine Porter (19:27)

Hmm. So after lifting the veil of anonymity that so often surrounds the victim, she's now making sure that there is no anonymity whatsoever around the conduct of the accused men.

Giselle Pellicot (19:41)

She's making sure that every graphic, horrific detail of this case is aired publicly. And you know, when they are played in court, this real awkward silence descends. And after a few minutes, many journalists stop looking at the screens because it's so uncomfortable. Her snores are filling the courtroom, the.

Catherine Porter (20:10)

Evidence of her unconsciousness.

Giselle Pellicot (20:11)

It's just she is. I mean, one of the doctors in the case described her as a corpse, and she sits there throughout. I have never seen her leave the courtroom while one of those videos is playing.

Catherine Porter (20:29)

It's hard for me, Catherine, to Fathom what kind of a defense can be put forward by the dozens of men, many of them in this courtroom, knowing what's on those videos, these audible sounds of her being asleep. So what are they saying? Or do we expect them to say in this trial in their own defense, if anything?

Giselle Pellicot (20:56)

Right. I mean, most cases of rape are he said, she said, but here is. There's a library of proof. And yet most of the men say what almost every man says in defense when it comes to rape, that they thought she was consenting. Most of them say that they had not come to rape her, but that Mr. Pellico had invited them over for a threesome and had either explained to them that she was pretending to sleep and it was part of their fantasy that she be woken up by this stranger together with her husband. Or some say that they were told that she had taken a few sleeping pills just as they got there to help her relax because she was shy. And a few, by the end, were saying that they believe that Mr. Pellico had also drugged them, that even though in the videos they seemed totally normal and weren't sleeping, were very active, that they have no memory of what happened in there. And they believe that somehow he had slipped something into a glass of water and had drugged them.

Catherine Porter (22:17)

And since we're talking about the defense of these men, what has her ex husband said in his defense?

Giselle Pellicot (22:25)

He has pled guilty. He has said that he was traumatized as a child and that he had these impulses that just got stronger and stronger and he couldn't help himself, and that his wife did not deserve this and that he loved her despite all the evidence to the contrary.

Catherine Porter (22:45)

So he is in no way denying that the worst conceivable version of this is exactly what happened.

Giselle Pellicot (22:51)

Right. He's, in fact, saying that these men who say they were tricked or they didn't understand that she was drugged, that they're all lying, that he says, clearly, I am a rapist, and all of these men in the room, a rapist just like me.

Catherine Porter (23:08)

Hmm. You had said that Gisele Pellico wanted to change society with this approach to the trial by letting herself be named, by opening it up to reporters like you. So the question is, has she accomplished that? And if she has, how exactly?

Giselle Pellicot (23:30)

Well, let me tell you what I've experienced going to the courtroom. You know, the first few days, there were just a few reporters, and then by, I would say, the second week, there were not just many more reporters. There were crowds and crowds of mostly women coming to get a seat in this courthouse to watch her.

Catherine Porter (23:54)

Wow.

Giselle Pellicot (23:55)

I'm standing outside the courtroom, and people are leaving, and there's a walkway that has formed of spectators, mostly women, outside the. And they are applauding Madame Helicot while she walks out. You can hear them plotting, saying, drabo. And when she would leave the courtroom at the end of every day, they started to form an honor line and line her route to applaud her and cheer her. And that crowd has not subsided. You know, I met a bunch of feminists that are part of a small feminist organization in Avignon in the courthouse. They've been going regularly to watch the trial. And at night, they have been taking what they've heard inside the courtroom and pasting it on the walls of Avignon in a way to kind of shock the city, I think, and shock the country to listen to what these men were saying in the rooms. So some of them that I passed on the streets on the way to the courthouse were like, it was an involuntary rape, or it was an accidental rape, or one that really stopped me was I raped her with my body, but not with my mind.

Catherine Porter (25:23)

It feels like if this scene outside the courtroom is any indication that what Gisele Pellico wants to happen around shame and rape culture, it's actually already starting to happen. She is effectuating this change herself.

Giselle Pellicot (25:41)

Yeah. The response has been enormous. People are talking about this around the dining room table, on the radio, in the newspapers. The stories in the newspapers have just been erupting. Men are talking about toxic masculinity and needing to change it. Women have been talking about consent and teaching consent in the classrooms, because that's something that has not been happening in France. Now she's really launched this very large, profound conversation, and you can feel it reverberating out across the country.

Catherine Porter (26:43)

It strikes me that the unintended consequence of these longtime practices that we use when it comes to rape, of shrouding a victim in anonymity, which makes so much sense for so many reasons, because of the shame you described, that they've had this unintentional consequence that we haven't really thought that much about, which is we end up focused so little on the women who have had this experience because they mostly remain anonymous. We end up spending so much of our time focused on the men. And what's changed here is that Gisele Pellico has said not just that she's gonna switch up the question of shame, but she's gonna switch up the question of basic power.

Giselle Pellicot (27:37)

Right. I mean, it's amazing to watch her in those videos. Cause she's so objectified. I mean, she is not a human being. She is a sex doll, basically. And she has taken something that she's so objectified and become, you know, a fully formed, very powerful person. Something else, Michael, that really resonated with me is that one of her lawyers said, you know, in most cases, trials, when you keep it private, it's just you, the victim facing the accuser alone in a room. And Gisele Pellico invited all of France into that room with her and all.

Catherine Porter (28:22)

All the world, all of. All of us.

Giselle Pellicot (28:23)

Right. And. And I think she's felt incredible support because of that. You know, on the last day of the court before the final statements, the judges asked her if she had anything else she wanted to say. And she got back up. And she said, you know, at the beginning of the trial, her family felt ashamed of the name Pellico. But she felt that over the past four months, she was sure that the name Dominic Pellico would be long forgotten, but the name that people would remember from this court case would be hers, Giselle Pellicot. And that already her grandchildren are proud to have that name.

Catherine Porter (29:17)

Well, Katherine, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Giselle Pellicot (29:21)

Thanks, Michael.

Michael Barbaro (29:30)

We'll be right back.

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Carol Rosenberg (30:09)

The New York Times. Right now, I'm sitting alone in the press room at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay. I've been coming here since four months after the 911 attacks. I probably spent around 2,000 nights at this Navy base. It's hard to get here. It's hard to get news from the prison. Often, you know, I'm the only reporter here. The New York Times takes you to difficult and controversial places, and that takes resources. You can power that kind of journalism by subscribing to the New York Times.

Michael Barbaro (30:40)

Here's what else you need to know. Today, Ukraine says it has assassinated the general who led Russia's nuclear defense force. The general Igor Kurvalov was killed when an explosive device planted inside a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entryway to a residential building. It was one of Ukraine's most brazen assassinations since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago and this was a frightening.

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Well planned targeted murder that was intended.

Giselle Pellicot (31:16)

To cause shock and attention and intimidation.

Michael Barbaro (31:20)

On Tuesday, New York City prosecutors charged Luigi Mangione with first degree murder in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare's CEO. The charges branded Mangione a terrorist and portrayed his alleged murder plot as a political act. Today's episode was produced by Shannon Lynn and Eric Krupke with help from Rob Zipko and Olivia Nad. It was edited by Lexi Diao and Michael Benoit, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker and Sophia Landman and was engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Runberg and Ben Landfirk of wonderlake. Special thanks to Segolen lradic That's it for the Daily I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.

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