What about the families of the convicted, they must be feeling pretty shocked. I know I couldn’t look anyone in the face if I was a wife or daughter of one of those monsters. Hopefully now this will pave the way for other victims to come forward and be brave.
Although what they did was plainly monstrous, we need to remember that many of them were just ordinary men. That can never make it acceptable, but it should make us realise that without a strong sense of what is right and wrong we can easily get lost.
The ripples of this case are going to spread a very long way, and I feel very sorry for those innocent families that are also suffering because of the actions of those men.
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I think you’re being very charitable, but not sure about the need for a ‘strong sense of right and wrong’, nor about the perpetrators being ‘ordinary men’. I think I know what you meant by this, but the implication of ‘ordinary’ surely isn’t what you intended.
Hopefully these are not ‘ordinary’ men, because if they are, we’re in a much worse place than even this shocking trial might suggest.
OTOH that there were nearly sixty men within a sixty km radius who have been convicted, makes one wonder about the national population density of people with such desires and proclivities. Hopefully those convicted are exceptions rather than ‘ordinary’.
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I think the view of those who have followed this case is that they are exactly that - ordinary men.
In fact it is dangerous to believe that they are anything else other than that. Just as it is important to recognise that “ordinary” men and women do dreadful things in war. If we believe they are somehow the exception, that they are “evil”, that they somehow have come into the world already corrupted, it means that society does not need to look long and hard at itself.
Gisele has offered the world an enormous gift. I hope the world can learn from this and what she has shown us.
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I have not followed the details of the trial but I have heard something of the defence put forward by some of the men. Is it possible that some of them could have thought that it was consensual? Was the lady unconscious, which would be a resounding ‘guilty’, or did the drugs affect her in a way that confused some of them? Hardly seems likely to me, so were their lawyer, incompetant, or charlatans?
Sorry to disagree, but one can counter argue that there are many examples of ‘ordinary’ people doing exceptionally extraordinarily courageous things in times of war. Sometimes these get recognised and these people are often described as ‘extraordinary’. Why shouldn’t the reverse be applicable?
I prefer a phrase like ‘seemingly ordinary people’ to be more appropriate.
Their lawyers’ role was to try and defend them, as is the case with any defence lawyer.
Someone has to - that’s the law.
That’s exactly my opinion too.
If I believe I am not capable of great evil (and good) then I’m deluding myself.
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My feeling is that people have enormous potential in many different directions, and are highly suggestible (as I described in another thread). They are also complex with many desires and capacities that might cause an individual to do something brave and kind and and amazing, but then later to do something cruel and base - or indeed the reverse of this.
Dominique Pelicot claims to have explained to each of them that his wife was drugged and unconscious. It seems likely that they simply didn’t see that what they did was wrong and their desire for sex swept away feelings of uncertainty, rather than being darkly and inherently evil, determined to rape this helpless woman.
A positive outcome of this case might be that many ordinary people - not just men - might look at themselves and ask “could that be me in the wrong circumstances?”. I hope so, because it might be just enough to make the right choice if faced with a dilemma.
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Surely it’s primarily a lack of empathy?
Perhaps, but I’m not sure that given a particular set of circumstances, empathy would be strong enough a guide in most people. Nor, I think, do many have a strong sense of empathy.
I think I’m a bit of an empathy vacuum but even I have trouble processing these scenarios.
Were the ‘invited’ ’ men present individually or was it a kind of gang rape ? I mean, did the men ‘work’ together or was it one at a time with the men not aware others were doing the same thing ?
Sorry but there’s no way of describing without being crude.
I understand it was 1 at a time over about 10 years. The appearance to me was that the husband carefully set things up and was part of a community sharing videos of these and many other things. This is important to understand, because we very often take our ‘rules’ of what’s right or wrong from the community around us, as is clear in other areas of sexuality and practice. So it seems to me that they were already in a place where the norms had been changed, but likely because it was in the fantasy world of ‘online’ it didn’t count as reality and so slipped under their radar and before they realised they were being changed. Let me emphasis that I’m making these observations from a detached POV with no more information than is in the news, plus a bit of experience of people and online communities.
There’s no excuse for this behaviour, but it’s useful to see how it might happen. Just to emphasise again, I think these guys started out as just ordinary men, who through circumstance and acceptance of situations have become responsible for participating in this.
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I honestly don’t think "ordinary " men would ever consider it (rape) acceptable or normalised behaviour.
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No matter what follows this phrase, I fear disappointment is in your future. Pretty much every atrocity ever has been committed by “ordinary men”.
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What then is the definition of ordinary?
I have never seen how some men contemplate rape. It can only be an insecurity thing. I mean why on earth would one rape a woman when, with some nice behavior it is possible to have full enjoyment with a willing participant?
As for having intercourse with a drugged up woman must be akin to necrophilia. Why would a man want to? Does not bear thinking about.
Yes, hats off to Mme Pelico. Every day she arrived in court with her head held high unlike the vile scum in the dock.
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Not sure the likes of Stalin, Hitler, PolPot etc would ever be called ordinary.
Did they do all the killing by their own hand?
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You have a higher confidence in “ordinary” men than I do then.
A recent Jonathon Glazer film called Zone of Interest that showed the banality of Rudolph Höss’s life as Commandant of Auschwitz and how he was an absolute “ordinary man”
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