Gisèle Pelicot addresses the press as she leaves the courthouse after hearing the verdict of the court that sentenced her ex-husband to the maximum term of 20 years in jail for committing and orchestrating her mass rapes with dozens of strangers he recruited online, in Avignon on December 19, 2024. | Source: MIGUEL MEDINA / Getty
Women everywhere, but especially white women in America, should be terrified by the outcome of the mass rape trial involving Frenchwoman Gisèle Pelicot. The case serves as a chilling harbinger of what’s at stake as we face another dark political moment, where Donald Trump’s potential return to power emboldens predators to openly assault women’s dignity, bodily autonomy and safety.
For nine years, between 2011 and 2020, Pelicot’s husband, now 72, drugged her with tranquilizers and sleeping pills, raped her, invited more than 70 local men to do the same while she was comatose, and filmed the encounters. Among his co-defendants are husbands and fathers, firefighters, truck drivers, soldiers, security guards, carpenters, a nurse, a prison guard, a journalist, a DJ and an HIV-positive retiree.
This cross-section of men, dubbed “Monsieur Tout-le-Monde” or “Mr. Everyman,” underscores the disturbing banality of predatory behavior hidden behind the facade of seemingly respectable ordinary men, making their collective complicity all the more chilling.
The system is structured to protect male privilege by excusing or minimizing violence against women rather than dismantling the power dynamics that enable it.
Dominique Pelicot pleaded guilty saying, “I was a rapist, but I’m not anymore.” Meanwhile, some of the other men denied that any assault took place, while 20 additional men, identified in the videos, remain at large.
This court sketch made on December 19, 2024, in Avignon, France, shows Dominique Pelicot’s attitudes during the hearing of the verdict of the court that sentenced him to the maximum term of 20 years in jail for committing and orchestrating the mass rapes of his ex-wife Gisèle Pelicot with dozens of strangers he recruited online. | Source: BENOIT PEYRUCQ / Getty
The audacity of these predators to minimize and rationalize their crimes is pathologically chilling. Pelicot tried to sever himself from accountability, acting as if the passage of time or his own personal declaration of reform absolved him of the irreparable trauma he inflicted on his ex-wife. His remark underscores the profound willful denial often shown in rape cases. There’s a dangerous tendency of predators to frame their crimes as events of the past and to detach themselves from the lasting consequences. These abusers, and sometimes even the justice system, prioritize the narrative of the perpetrator’s supposed redemption over the survivor’s demand for accountability and justice.
Despite the overwhelming evidence in this case, the French courts handed down insultingly low sentences ranging from just three years to a maximum of 20 years, the latter given only to the ex-husband. These lenient punishments effectively rewarded the perpetrators for their depravity. Sentencing all of them to life would have sent a clear message that such violence is intolerable and that women’s lives and autonomy are non-negotiable. But in a patriarchal society, such a message cannot be fully delivered because the system itself is structured to protect male privilege by excusing or minimizing violence against women rather than dismantling the power dynamics that enable it.
Thousands of protesters, mostly women, flooded the courthouse steps after the sentences were handed down. Their collective fury was palpable as they stood in solidarity with Gisèle Pelicot and denounced the appallingly lenient sentences. For white women in America, this case should strike an even deeper chord because it is a stark and unrelenting cautionary tale that lays bare a chilling truth: even those historically granted proximity to societal power are devastatingly unprotected from its betrayals.
Pelicot endured one of the most brutal forms of violence imaginable, yet the justice system—supposedly designed to protect women like her—failed spectacularly. The outcome signals something much darker than judicial incompetence.
We are witnessing a cultural shift toward the normalization of violence against women, particularly in a global political landscape where power is concentrated in the hands of abusers, enablers, and misogynists. The outcome of this trial sends a chilling message: The value of women’s lives, bodies and voices is alarmingly low. This should be especially harrowing for white women, who have long believed their proximity to white male power shields them from such brutalities. The Pelicot verdict shatters that illusion. If someone like Pelicot can be so easily discarded by the justice system, no woman can afford to feel safe within it.
Repeat after me: “This is not just about a Frenchwoman, Gisèle Pelicot.”
Her case is a harbinger of a broader societal trend in America. It’s about the growing acceptance of unapologetic misogyny and male impunity, the weaponization of women’s bodies, and the unapologetic misogyny that permeates America’s highest levels of power and everyday life.
If a white, educated, married woman can be brutalized and denied justice, no white woman is safe.
In Trump’s America, a political era that has elevated predators to positions of power, the devaluation of women’s autonomy and safety is rife. Trump’s history of allegations and dismissive rhetoric towards women, combined with his appointments of men accused of abuse and his administration’s draconian policies on reproductive rights, has created an environment where violence against women is being normalized. The Pelicot trial’s sentencing aligns disturbingly with this trend, suggesting that women, even white women, are expendable when white male power is at stake.
Trump’s recent Cabinet picks have included men accused of everything from domestic violence to sexual assault. These political selections were not oversights or exceptions—they were deliberate signals that allegations against men in power no longer carry consequences. This culture of impunity trickles down, creating a justice system where even the most violent crimes against women are met with leniency. The Pelicot verdict is not an aberration, it is a reflection of a new normal.
President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman, walks through the Dirksen Senate Office building on December 11, 2024, in Washington, D.C. | Source: Anna Moneymaker / Getty
The Pelicot case also intersects with a broader assault on women’s autonomy. We are living in an era where the Supreme Court has stripped women of their reproductive rights, forcing survivors (including adolescent girls) of sexual violence to carry pregnancies conceived in trauma. The same patriarchal mindset that excuses Pelicot’s attackers is at work in policies that dehumanize women, reducing them to vessels for reproduction while denying them the agency to make decisions about their own bodies.
Donald Trump’s treatment of women has done more than showcase his own misogyny. It has trickled down into the cultural fabric, emboldening everyday men to act without fear of accountability. The normalization of his behavior sends a chilling message: Powerful men can do as they please, and society will find ways to excuse or minimize their actions. The Pelicot case starkly demonstrates this phenomenon.
It is time for white women to wake up to the reality that their complicity has a cost, and that cost is their own safety, autonomy and humanity.
The men who assaulted Gisèle Pelicot, like her husband who orchestrated it all, acted with the same audacious entitlement. Their participation in such depravity reflects a broader cultural atmosphere where male dominance and impunity are reinforced at the highest levels. The lenient sentences handed down to Pelicot’s perpetrators mirror this disregard for the severity of violence against women, suggesting that such actions, no matter how heinous, will not be met with proportionate consequences.
This case is a microcosm of a larger societal regression, one where Trump’s attitude toward women has empowered some men to behave with a similar disregard for women’s autonomy and dignity. It underscores a growing tolerance for violence and dehumanization, particularly as systems of justice fail to hold men accountable. If women like Gisèle Pelicot are met with indifference by the courts, it is a stark warning of what happens when the normalization of misogyny filters from powerful figures down to the everyday man.
As the line between the protected and the vulnerable grows thinner, the Pelicot trial is a stark reminder that those systems will sacrifice anyone to preserve power—including the very women who have historically supported them.
White women have long believed in a false sense of security—one built on their proximity to white male power and their alignment with systems of control. But the Pelicot trial shatters this illusion. If a white, educated, married woman can be brutalized and denied justice, no white woman is safe. This verdict should terrify white women not because they are uniquely vulnerable but because they are realizing that the system they have defended will not protect them when it counts. It is a reminder that aligning with power will not save them from becoming casualties of that power. It is time for white women to wake up to the reality that their complicity has a cost, and that cost is their own safety, autonomy, and humanity.
This is a moment for white women to choose whether they will continue to uphold the racist patriarchal systems that brutalize them or join the fight to dismantle them.
The Pelicot case, with its chilling details and the sheer number of perpetrators, exposes an uncomfortable truth: The men white women should fear the most are not the imagined “others” or fabricated monsters of racist myths, but the men closest to them.
The “Black beast rapist” trope of the post-Reconstruction era, which falsely painted Black men as the ultimate threat to white women’s safety, was a deliberate diversion from the actual sources of danger. It deflected attention from the reality that white women were, and still are, far more likely to experience sexual violence at the hands of white men within their own homes and communities.
The men in the Pelicot case occupied roles society often associates with protection, stability and trustworthiness. Yet this sadistic collective action underscores how patriarchy operates in concert with whiteness, enabling men to commit atrocities while maintaining their veneer of respectability. White folks need to reckon with this reality.
The systems that stoked fears of the so-called “black beast rapist” remain disturbingly silent when it comes to white men who violate, exploit, and dehumanize women. The question white women must ask themselves is: Why? Why aren’t these cases given the same cultural weight, the same ritualized outrage, as those that have historically been fabricated to vilify Black men?
We are witnessing a cultural shift toward the normalization of violence against women.
The answer lies in the enduring dynamics of power and control. The cultural machinery that crafted the “Black beast rapist” trope was never about protecting white women; it was about upholding white male dominance. To expose white male predators would require dismantling the very systems that uphold that dominance, a task that patriarchal institutions, and many of those complicit within them, are unwilling to undertake.
The Pelicot case reveals that justice systems, the media and cultural narratives are far more invested in maintaining the illusion of white male respectability than in safeguarding the lives and bodies of women. White women must confront the devastating truth: The greatest threat has always been within the walls of their own households and communities, among men they were taught to trust and revere. Until these narratives shift, the cycle of violence and betrayal will continue unchecked.
Important questions remain:
When will we be inundated with inflamed media narratives about the “white beast rapist?”
When will society confront the glaring truth that the white men who perpetrate violence against women—men like Dominique Pelicot and his accomplices—are not strangers lurking in the shadows, but husbands, coworkers, neighbors and community leaders?
Where is the collective cultural reckoning with the fact that white men, protected by the same systems that perpetuated the myth of the “Black beast rapist,” have been the primary enforcers of patriarchal violence?
How much longer will White America’s silence persist and shield the predators among them from the scrutiny and condemnation they so clearly deserve?
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and the author of Spare the Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America.
SEE ALSO:
The Predator-In-Chief: Trump’s Cabinet Picks Are A Legacy Of White Male Violence
Trusting White Women Is A Delusional Lost Cause—And History Proves It
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