After Giséle Pelicot, now what?

It's been 3 weeks since the verdict was announced. What will this lead to?

I returned from France a few days ago, after ringing in the New Year with a few friends in Paris. I took the train down from London with dreams of brasseries and shops lit by evening streetlights, bright pastel-colored macaroons and raspberry tarts sitting in windows, sharing Champagne with friends in those precious little coupe glasses that you somehow always want to drink from in Paris, and stumbling upon the Centre Pompidou, like I always seem to, with its red-and blue mangle of pipes and escalators, its insides turned outside to greet the public.

It was the same excitement I have whenever I have the privilege of visiting Paris. But this time a weird number kept running through my head, too, that I couldn’t get rid of.. 94%. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I thought about it as I headed out on New Year’s Eve, figuring out how to get back alone after dark.

The news articles that ran over the holiday season about Giséle Pelicot’s rape trial were filled with numbers: the 9 years her 72-year old husband started drugging her, raping her, and recruiting other men to have sex with her; these 50 other men accused of rape, attempted rape and sexual assault; the 21 men who haven’t yet been identified, and the 17 who are now trying to appeal their charges.

94% was a number that kept cropping up too — the 94% of rapes on average that were either not prosecuted or never came to a trial in France, and the 86% of sexual assaults, in the period between 2012 and 2021, according to France's Institute of Public Policies. Also, the fact that “consent” is still not included in the legal definition of rape in France.

The focus in most articles about Pelicot has been on attitudes towards rape and sexual assault in France—but I was curious about that 94%, how it compared with numbers in the UK, where I live now, and the US, my home country. While I could find no apples to apples comparisons, our numbers in these countries are, sadly but not surprisingly, appalling as well.

In England and Wales, only 2.6% of rape cases result in a charge. It’s already unfathomably horrible to experience rape, but even victims who want to speak out about their rape have little chance of their case even making it to trial, due to the case backlog. The backlog has been attributed to a number of factors - the pandemic, budget cuts, barrister strikes, lawyers not wanting to take on such “complex,” poorly paid cases. This huge backlog in the UK has led to what Dame Veira Baird, the former Victims’ Commissioner for England and Wales, has called a “decriminalisation of rape.” There are many theories why prosecution rates are so low, from the use of inexperienced officers, to the proliferation of rape myths. It also takes a toll on victims, who, must retell their experience in court, have their private lives searched through and questioned, and has Rebecca Solnit pointed out in her Guardian op ed, most victims do not have the degree of public support that Giséle Pelicot had during her trial.

In the US, where, according to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), 1 out of every 6 women have been the victom of a rape or attempted rape, there remains a massive backlog of unsubmitted rape kits in cities across the country. The extent of the backlog is difficult to calculate, but a 2021 study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice estimated 300,000 to 400,000 unsubmitted SAKs (sexual assault kits) in the United States between 2014-2018 alone. The National Institute of Justice has done some research into why kits weren't submitted in the city of Detroit, with reasons varying from again, victim-blaming to lack of proper training and police budget cuts.

In our 24-hour-news cycle, it feels strange to write about something that was huge news a few weeks ago, but in some way, it also feels more telling. We attach the word “post” to a certain watershed event to indicate the landscape has changed drastically after that event, like post-#MeToo, that sometimes I think we trick ourselves and others into thinking the world has changed much more than it has (and don’t even get me started on “post-racial era” after Obama was elected). As headlines from Giséle Pelicot’s story become increasingly replaced by the next biggest catastrophe or crime, and the public rubbernecking shifts to that instead, what real cultural and systemic change will we see coming forward? And will the discussion come from mostly women, or will just as many men take part, which as Solnit also mentions, will be essential to any real change? I've gotta say, I am not particularly comforted by the news the other day that the move to set up specialist tribunals that Prime Minister Starmer was pushing to deal with the UK backlog of rape cases have been put on hold.

Giséle Pelicot has already done the super-human by making her name be public in one of the worst sex crimes in recent history so that, because, as she has famously said, “It’s not for us to have the shame, it’s for them.” But I hope we can honor her massive sacrifice by doing more than just acknowledging her bravery. Because she also said, although it’s quoted a bit less, “It’s true that I hear lots of women, and men, who say you’re very brave. I say it’s not bravery, it’s will and determination to change society.”

I'm a huge cynic when it comes to platitudes about changing the world, but ”the will and determination to change society” spoken from this woman's lips stayed with me, because of the magnitude of what she’d done. A woman who sacrifices this much deserves more than a few days as headline news. I want her sacrifice to be the move that ignites change, not just change where we pause for a few days and marvel at the atrocity of a single man and a misogynistic culture that would let this happen, and as we tally up all the awful numbers thrown at us —but change where we work toward making sure the hundreds of thousands of voices of those that have come before Ms. Pelicot are not buried and abandoned for good, and ensuring we do not silence the voices after.

So after Giséle Pelicot...now what?

To learn more about the work RAINN is doing to address the rape-kit backlog in the US and donate, visit https://rainn.org/

To donate to Rape Crisis England & Wales, please visit https://rapecrisis.org.uk/

To donate to Soldarité Femmes in France, please visit https://solidaritefemmes.org/