Gisèle Pélicot and Real-Life Conspiracy
“We live in a rape culture, which, among other things, means that we accept that rape exists, is inevitable, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Something like this happens, we arrest the man, say it’s horrible, and pretend that it’s over, but it continues to go on...That is a genuine, real-life conspiracy. If we’re not screaming about it to anyone who will listen, we’re contributing to the cover-up.”
Trigger warning for discussion of a brutal case involving rape.
The internet has no shortage of conspiracy theories. There are the famous ones about 9/11, the moon landing, and the assassination of J.F.K. as well as the lesser known ones such as Australia isn’t real. I became fascinated with these types of conspiracies in my early 20s and the more I looked into them, the more I learned that none of them hold up to any amount of scrutiny.
The main problem is the sheer number of people such conspiracies require. It only takes one of them to come forward with evidence to spoil it for everyone. As the old saying goes, two people can only keep a secret if one of them is dead. Still, there are real conspiracies. They’re just so obvious and ingrained in the culture that we ignore them.
The recent story involving Gisèle P. (Note: Since her last name is her married name, I’m opting to use just the initial instead) is a prime example of this. Her then-husband drugged her and then, over the course of nearly a decade, recruited 72 men who raped her. It is easy to hear this story, acknowledge that it’s absolutely horrible, then dismiss the ex-husband as evil incarnate and hope that he spends the rest of his life behind bars along with the 72 men he recruited.
All of that is a valid response. But it misses an important question: How the hell did he recruit 72 men to rape his wife? There’s a short answer to this question: He used an online chatroom.
But that’s not exactly what I’m asking. What I’m asking is about the minutia of the process. And I’m not saying I want to know the answers—in fact, I specifically don’t—but how did every single step of this process continue for as long as it did without the man getting caught? How did he have so many people visit his house without other people (or even his wife!) noticing? How many men did he have to ask to come visit that 72 of them said yes? How was he able to share videos of this without any of it leaking and him getting caught sooner?
This man was not careful.
You know how I know? Because the way he was ultimately caught is because he was filming upskirt videos of women with his phone at a local supermarket. This wasn’t some elaborate Eyes Wide Shut secret society where the piano player had to work blindfolded or something. This was a creepy doofus and 72 other creepy doofuses in a chatroom taking advantage of a woman who, reasonably, didn’t expect her husband to drug her so that he could film other men raping her.
And then spread that video around the internet as evidence. It still took nearly a decade for the arrest.
