Catherine Porter
Appearances
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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. Videos of her sexual assault? Videos of her sexual assaults, many of them, because many of the men are denying that this was rape. They're basically saying they believed that she had consented to this and that they hadn't intended to rape her.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
And here they have, unlike most rape victims, they have evidence of what had exactly happened in that room. They have videos.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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 stopped looking at the screens because it's so... Uncomfortable. Her snores are filling the courtroom.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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. Pelico had invited them over for a threesome.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
But there's all these other elements that have made this case impossible to look away from. And the most important one is the woman at the center and the way she has conducted herself throughout this trial and her decision really to use her own private torment and hell as a force for greater good to change society.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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 are rapists just like me.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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. Wow.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
I'm standing outside the courtroom, and people are leaving, and there's a walkway that has formed of spectators, mostly women, outside the... Oh, and they are applauding Madame Palico while she walks out. You can hear them applauding, saying bravo. 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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. Wow. Or one that really stopped me was I raped her with my body, but not with my mind.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
Sure. So this case begins in the end of 2020, and it involves a married couple living in the south of France, Giselle Pellicot and her husband, Dominique. They had been married for about 50 years and had retired from the Paris region and moved down to this small, idyllic town. And in many ways, they lived a very idyllic life. He was going for long bike rides. She had become a big walker.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
Right. I mean, it's amazing to watch her in those videos because 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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 Giselle Pelico invited all of France into that room with her. All of the world, all of us. Right. And I think she's felt incredible support because of that.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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 Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
The name Dominic Pellico would be long forgotten, but the name that people will remember from this court case would be hers, Giselle Pellico, and that already her grandchildren are proud to have that name.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
They had three children who they're very close to and seven grandchildren who would come down for long weekends. And by all accounts, they were very happy, except for she was suffering some weird medical problems. Her hair was falling out. She had lost quite a bit of weight, but most notably, she had these increasing blackouts.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
And he was driving her to different medical appointments to try and figure out what was going wrong. And then, one day in September, things began to really change. Her husband, Dominique, is caught by security guards filming up the skirts of women in a nearby grocery store. And they call the police.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
The police come and they take not only his two cell phones and cameras he's using, but they go back to his house and get his laptop and some other electronics. And they discovered something pretty shocking on them. They found these pictures and videos of a woman who seemed to be unconscious being raped and some screen captures of conversations about raping her.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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. 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 do.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
I'm a little worried about it, but we're talking about it and we're going to 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
He goes in to meet with some police officers and 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
They tell her that these videos they've been looking at on her husband's electronics are of an 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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, 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
In that bedroom at night when he's inviting men over, he's cut into a separate little either video or a photo to keep for himself. And through these 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
Well, in the French press, they started calling them Monsieur Tout Le Monde, 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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 the most remarkable about them is that they just seem like, you know, Your next-door neighbor. They could be your next-door neighbor.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
Me too. It's nice to be back with you, Michael.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
And in the end, that's what really shocked a lot of French people is that they were their next-door neighbors.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
Right, because most victims are offered the right to have a closed trial and most of them take it. 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...
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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. Huh. And I thought, you know, I just didn't believe it because I thought there's no way that the 71-year-old grandmother...
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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 size. She thinks there's no place for shame on the side of the victim. It should be placed on the side of the accused.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
And she makes this really brave and unusual decision to open her trial to the public and use her married name.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
Right. So she decides on the day that the trial opens that she will be known publicly as Giselle Pellico.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
No. Oh, my God. And I think it hasn't receded from the French consciousness either, because once you put your mind to it and you lock your eyes on it, it's really hard to tear them away. This is a story of... A rape trial in which 51 men are on trial at the same time for raping or sexually assaulting the same woman. So I think that even if you just hear that much, it's so much to handle.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
It's a full spectrum and you really get that sense sitting here where I'm looking around that just all, it's like being in a bus. All sorts of people.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
They're sitting all around me as a journalist in the back of the room, but also right up against Madame Pellico, who's sitting against one wall behind her two lawyers, and in front of her and all around her are the accused men who were charged with raping her.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
The 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
Yeah. Madame Pellico 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. What do you mean? Well, you know, just imagine... And this would be a moment of great nervousness, of fury, of anger, of probably emotional crisis.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
And yet, from the first moment, Madame Pellicot has been literally the picture of poise and grace everywhere. 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.
The Daily
France’s Horrifying Rape Trial Has a Feminist Hero
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 the time for the country to have a big conversation around what it means to be raped and how prevalent it is.