Gisele Pelicot, a 72-year-old woman who had retired to a small village in provincial France, has become a heroine not only to compatriots, but to people thousands of miles away, rightly saluted by global leaders and ordinary citizens alike. In refusing anonymity and insisting that the trial of her ex-husband and other men for raping her be held in public, she has forced a broader recognition that “shame must change sides.” Her extraordinary courage and composure shone through the grim hearings.
For almost 10 years, Gisele Pelicot’s husband of decades drugged and raped her, and sedated her so that dozens of others could rape her at his instigation.
Dominique Pelicot was caught by chance after a security guard caught him filming up women’s skirts at a supermarket, prompting police to seize his computer equipment. However, he has since admitted an attempted rape in 1999, after police matched his DNA to a sample from the scene, and is under investigation for a 1991 rape and murder that has similarities with that incident. He denies involvement.
Yet while Dominique Pelicot is one of France’s most serious sexual offenders, he is in one sense typical: Most offenders are known to their victims and many are their partners. The scale of the trial also made it clear that sexual predators are not rare or anomalous. Fifty more men stood trial and were found guilty; about 20 more have not been traced. Those were ordinary men of all ages and backgrounds, including a nurse, a journalist, a fire officer and truck drivers. Several experienced childhood sexual abuse, but others described idyllic upbringings.
In the words of the Pelicots’ former daughter-in-law, abuse is a “banality,” because “abuse is everywhere.”
The case raises hard questions about France’s culture and its legal system. The necessity of consent is not inscribed within the law. Yet women around the world could easily envision that apparently unimaginable crime happening in their countries, their neighborhoods — perhaps even their homes.
Although Gisele Pelicot has reminded women that the shame lies with their attacker, not with them, her abusers have yet to absorb that lesson. She appeared surely irreproachable to even unreconstructed observers: a married pensioner who had been attacked while unconscious and whose husband admitted to orchestrating the rapes, with men he often met in a chatroom entitled “without her knowledge,” in crimes captured in graphic videos.
And yet most of her attackers denied rape and their lawyers asked her whether she was a swinger, exhibitionist or alcoholic; why she was not angrier with her husband; why she did not cry more in court.
One perpetrator said that he “had not paid attention” to whether she had consented; another that “the husband had given me permission.” The wife of one suggested that “because I refused him [sex] all the time, as a man, he had to look elsewhere.”
In other words, although the reckoning Gisele Pelicot has forced is remarkable, it is only partial. Campaigners and Pelicot’s children have expressed disappointment that sentences were as short as three years, with two sentences suspended.
Gisele Pelicot deserves our gratitude. However, although she is a survivor and a campaigner, she is also a victim who lives with the lifelong consequences of four sexually transmitted diseases and who has described herself as “totally destroyed.” And although her courage has inspired so many, no woman should have to be that brave or that strong. The politicians who have applauded her must now make good on her demands for change by ensuring justice for other women and addressing the culture that enables such crimes.
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
When it became clear that the world was entering a new era with a radical change in the US’ global stance in US President Donald Trump’s second term, many in Taiwan were concerned about what this meant for the nation’s defense against China. Instability and disruption are dangerous. Chaos introduces unknowns. There was a sense that the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) might have a point with its tendency not to trust the US. The world order is certainly changing, but concerns about the implications for Taiwan of this disruption left many blind to how the same forces might also weaken
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
As the new year dawns, Taiwan faces a range of external uncertainties that could impact the safety and prosperity of its people and reverberate in its politics. Here are a few key questions that could spill over into Taiwan in the year ahead. WILL THE AI BUBBLE POP? The global AI boom supported Taiwan’s significant economic expansion in 2025. Taiwan’s economy grew over 7 percent and set records for exports, imports, and trade surplus. There is a brewing debate among investors about whether the AI boom will carry forward into 2026. Skeptics warn that AI-led global equity markets are overvalued and overleveraged
RSS