Joette Katz Authors Law.com Article Entitled "French Rape Case Highlights Need for Vigilance, Education

In 2015, a study was conducted by academics at the University of North Dakota and the North Dakota State University. Its sample size was 86 students. Roughly one third of male university students who took part in the study admitted that they would rape a woman if there were no consequences.

The study, published in the scientific journal Violence and Gender, presented mostly white male American participants a questionnaire on how they would act in certain sexual situations. One question asked how the participants would act in a situation where they could have sexual intercourse with a woman against her will “if nobody would ever know and there wouldn’t be any consequences.”

Notably, 31.7% of all men participating in the study would force a woman to have sexual intercourse in such a “consequence-free situation.” This of course is rape. Unfortunately, most men who answered “yes” did not even recognize their actions as such. But, when explicitly asked whether they would rape a woman if there were no consequences, only 13.6% of participants said they would do so; better to be sure, but nothing to celebrate. The acknowledgment that they would use force to obtain intercourse, but deny that as rape, showed a gap between the proportion of men who would endorse the use of coercion but reject the “rape” label for their actions. The study was intended, initially in part, to identify what education programs needed to focus on, including dispelling the idea of the “stereotypical rapist,” in order to change the behavior of that group.

Since that study, much has been done to shine a light on rape-on and off college campuses, but not much has changed in the world. At another university, this one in Oklahoma, a more recent study revealed that 84% of college men who committed rape said that what they did was definitely not rape, but as reported in other studies, when survey items describe behaviors, not just with labels, more men admit to having engaged in sexually coercive behaviors in the past and more women self-report past victimization.

And then there is wartime sexual violence, which is not new, and indeed is one of history’s greatest silences and one of today’s most extreme atrocities. This conduct is not merely the action of rogue soldiers, but has been a deliberate tactic of warfare, displacing, terrorizing, and destroying individuals, families and entire communities, reaching unthinkable levels of cruelty, leaving the survivors with emotional trauma and psychological damage, physical injuries, unwanted pregnancies, social stigma and sexually transmitted diseases. The costs and consequences last for generations. And often, mass rape continues after the guns fall silent and peace treaties are signed.

What has prompted my focus on an age-old problem is the recent trial in France where a panel of judges found fifty men guilty of raping a woman whose then-husband had drugged her unconscious. Over a decade, Gisèle Pelicot’s then-husband, Dominique, drugged her and invited men he had met online to rape her. With the help of a library of videos and photographs that he had taken of the assaults, the police tracked down 50 other men — and charged all but one with raping, attempting to rape or sexually assaulting Ms. Pelicot.

For years, Dominique had recruited the men to rape Gisèle on a now-defunct dating site using the chatroom called “without her knowledge,” where he would exchange pictures of an unconscious Gisèle before moving to Skype and text messages to arrange the meeting with his accomplices. Gisèle testified that she was completely unaware of her husband’s actions. But over time, according to court documents, the frequent sedation and sexual abuse began to take a physical toll, prompting Gisèle, accompanied by Dominique, to see a doctor to whom she complained about memory loss and pelvic pain.

Many of the defendants thought the husband’s consent was sufficient. A majority said that they did not know what they were doing was rape.  The videos of Gisèle’s comatose body being probed and penetrated by strangers prompted thousands to take to the streets of France and started a national conversation about relationships between men and women, consent, and rape culture.

Fortunately, the common law rule that a husband cannot rape his wife, traced back to the 17th century, and generally expressed in terms of contract law and implied consent, has largely been abolished. And while the #MeToo movement in this country has done a lot to educate on this subject, we are not out of the woods yet. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center has alarming statistics about sexual assault, its victims, the frequency of sexual assault by intimate partners and acquaintances and the prevalence of sexual assault against undergraduate women and men. This despite all the federal and state legislation and education provided by countless lawyers, educators and administrators about what consent entails and all the guidance regarding approved definitions. There is still much work to be done.

Many of us recently have had the fortunate opportunity to be with family over the holidays, and as with so many things, this is where these conversations can and ideally should begin. To be sure, they are awkward, and there never seems to be the “right” time. But again, as with so many things, these lessons can be learned in multiple venues and reinforced repeatedly. The Pelicot case seemed truly unimaginable until it wasn’t

Copyright 2025. ALM Global, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Originally published by Connecticut Law Tribune and Law.com [https://www.law.com/ctlawtribune/2025/01/06/french-rape-case-highlights-need-for-vigilance-education], reprinted by permission.