Will this trial be remembered as France’s reckoning with sexual violence in the digital age?
Closing arguments are underway in the mass rape trial of 51 men who were invited over the internet to the home of Dominique Pélicot to assault his sedated wife, Gisèle—repeatedly, over several years. The defendants come from all walks of life: some confess fully, while others insist they’re not rapists, claiming they believed it was all part of a consensual sex game.
