‘Shame must change sides’

As 72year old Gisele Pelicot walked out of a French court last Saturday the crowd gathered outside broke into applauseThe case being heard is against Dominique Pelicot Ms Pelicotrsquos husband of 50 years and 50 other men For years Pelicot drugged his wife invited other men to rape her while she was unconscious and filmed the abuse His digital archive revealed nearly 80 men 50 have been identified and charged 30 remain unknown to all but themselvesMs Pelicot has waived the customary anonymity customarily of rape trials She said ldquoshame must change sidesrdquo By making every aspect of the trial public she refuses the perpetrators a hiding place in the name of her privacy and lsquohonourrsquo Her composure is remarkable Words like brave are too tinny to describe it As she has said in her court testimony it masks ldquoa field of devastationrdquo That is why it is emotionally piercing and powerful ricocheting across walls that ring the world with silence Many of these walls are made of wordsYvonne Roberts wrote in The Guardian that many victims of sexual crimes do not feel media reports mirror their experiences A 12year study of media reports demonstrated that media focuses on stranger rape and rapists as monsters and deviants But statistics worldwide overwhelmingly show most rapists are known to survivors Much of assault happens in their own homes and workplaces Many of the men who raped Gisele Pelicot were lsquoordinary menrsquomdashjournalists soldiers nurses supermarket workersmdashlike many men you may know in your everyday lifeThis exceptionalised manner of reporting helps create disbelief in survivors Because rapists look like ordinary men or are admired men survivors are dismissed as exaggerators and hysterics even liars ldquoItrsquos not that bad no kids were involved nobody diedrdquo said the mayor of the Pelicotsrsquo home townndashas Indian politicians so often do Nadia el Bouroumi a defence lawyer in the Peacutelicot trial filmed herself dancing to lsquoWake me up before you gogordquo as if to mock Ms Peacutelicotrsquos assertion that she wasnrsquot pretending to be asleep that she had no idea what was being done to herSince the RG Kar college rape and murder there has been a rash of predictable articles about how ldquoIndia has rape culturerdquo Though rooted in good intent this form of civilizational diagnosis unthinkingly feeds into conversations about national culture and honour Each society rushes to show it is culturally superior by denying the reality of gendered violence and silences survivor experiences to preserve national identity A recent stuIn France MeToo has been resisted because the French believe they are a sexually sophisticated culture and MeToo is American puritanism In India we rush to prove we are protectors of women worshippers of devi A recent study on ambivalent sexism found that the greater this belief in protectionism the more the tolerance for spousal violence If most rapists are known to the victim what does that tolerance mean for justiceSome of Ms Pelicotrsquos rapists believed her husbandrsquos consent was all they needed Perhaps most truthful was one Lionel R ldquo I didnrsquot ask myself too many questionsrdquoWhy would he The questions in sexual crimes are always for victims who become accused of attracting violence which is to be unquestioningly expected Gisele Pelicotrsquos unflinching composure demands that for shame to change sides the questions must tooParomita Vohra is an awardwinning Mumbaibased filmmaker writer and curator working with fiction and nonfiction Reach her at paromitavohramiddaycom