Witches of Scotland - WITCHES OF FRANCE - ANNETTE YOUNG on GISÈLE PELICOT

00:00:00.960 I am Clare Mitchell, Doctor of Laws and King's Council.

00:00:04.080 And I am Zoe Vendetotsi, Doctor of Laws, Teacher and Writer.

00:00:07.760 On the 8th of March 2020, International Women's Day, we launched the Feminist Witches of Scotland

00:00:13.200 campaign. The Witchcraft Act, enforced between 1563 and 1736, saw thousands of people, mostly

00:00:21.360 women, accused and executed as witches in Scotland in the country's biggest and most brutal miscarriage

00:00:27.840 of Justice. Our campaign had three aims, to get a formal state apology for those accused

00:00:33.480 of witchcraft, to obtain a pardon for all those convicted and to get a national memorial

00:00:38.920 to remember those involved in the Witchcraft Act.

00:00:42.140 On International Women's Day 2022, the first of our aims was realised when First Minister

00:00:47.340 Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal state apology to those accused as witches. The first formal

00:00:52.220 state apology ever. We are currently working with politicians to ensure there is legislation

00:00:56.720 past to pardon those accused as witches to change their status from convicted witches to those who

00:01:02.120 ought never to have been prosecuted. We continue our work to obtain a national monument so those

00:01:07.240 who suffered will never be forgotten. Join us as we speak to the experts on the witchcraft trials

00:01:11.900 both here in Scotland and further abroad as we explore the history of women in Scotland

00:01:16.440 and continue the cultural conversation of what it means to be a woman.

00:01:21.120 hello and welcome to the witches of scotland podcast claire mitchell and myself are delighted

00:01:29.860 to welcome you along to episode three of season two of the witches of scotland now today claire

00:01:36.900 we're having a slightly divergent um topic aren't we we are well i mean in some senses yes in some

00:01:46.000 senses no oh answered like a true lawyer um thank you um what we're going to talk about today is

00:01:53.200 we're going to talk about what happened to a very very brave woman in France we'll come to that

00:01:59.400 later um but we thought because we wanted to talk about that we'd also explore what happened

00:02:06.500 to the women that were accused of witchcraft in France and see what their experience was

00:02:11.940 and I think in the future it might be good to actually get an expert in on but we thought

00:02:15.780 we thought we'd just give you a few stories beforehand yeah no that's good and I think

00:02:21.880 it's interesting as well to keep thinking about what happened in Europe in different ways because

00:02:27.280 recently we focused a wee bit obviously on Britain naturally particularly Scotland and we focused on

00:02:32.600 what happened in North America but we have an expert coming up soon that we're going to interview

00:02:36.820 about what happened in the Basque region and it'd be great to get a French expert on as well as you're

00:02:42.160 mentioning and it's always interesting to see what our neighbours were up to even though we

00:02:46.820 were so close they were quite different shall we say approaches in some ways ultimately fairly

00:02:52.080 similar you know a lot of women were accused of being witches and executed but slightly different

00:02:57.280 stats and focuses we should also say that because we're going to be talking about the

00:03:05.380 Pellico trial

00:03:06.760 that there's going to be some

00:03:09.500 quite distressing discussions

00:03:11.620 about acts of sexual

00:03:13.460 violence.

00:03:14.720 If that part of the interview isn't for

00:03:17.440 you, then just skip on and we'll

00:03:19.480 see you next episode. 1.00

00:03:20.980 I would imagine though the vast majority of the women 0.87

00:03:23.220 and men that are listening to this are

00:03:25.400 already quite ready

00:03:27.420 for horror because the whole

00:03:29.460 nature of this is pretty jarring and unpleasant.

00:03:31.620 Absolutely, absolutely.

00:03:32.760 but i just yeah yeah but i just wouldn't want anyone sitting there thinking this is not

00:03:38.620 like i think the fact that we're talking about modern events it makes it a bit different doesn't

00:03:45.420 it because you can always give yourself a bit of distance when you're talking about hundreds of

00:03:48.620 years ago until you really start getting into the detail of it and then i think past falls away to

00:03:53.820 certain extent but anyway we're running away with ourselves claire and we're talking about the main

00:03:58.160 part of the episode and we're neglecting the initial parts of the episode people are expecting

00:04:04.000 to hear so I'm going to ask you now Claire what's been happening in the news

00:04:11.640 news now right back at you Zoe because before we came on this evening

00:04:22.040 um zoe had been researching and had been in fact in contact with well i've reached out they've not

00:04:29.160 replied to me yet to be fair we just emailed them okay i like reaching out i like reaching out

00:04:34.600 it's very american because it's an american story claire you tell the story tell them the news

00:04:41.300 okay so there is a case that's happening just now where um more than 300 years after maryland

00:04:50.300 in America in the United States of America had their last documented witch trial their state

00:04:55.740 lawmakers are now thinking about a proposal that's been made to exonerate those who were accused of

00:05:01.260 witchcraft in Maryland during the colonial era and it will if it's passed it'll absolve the seven

00:05:08.200 women and one man who faced allegations of conjuration witchcraft and dealing with evil

00:05:14.400 and wicked spirits which is how it was described in 1604 when they put together the legal framework

00:05:20.000 for this um there is a woman called heather bagnell who is the anne arundel county democrat

00:05:28.300 and she is the person who's introduced the resolution and here's a quote from her which i

00:05:32.620 think is really great and really chimes with what our campaign is which is it's never the wrong time

00:05:37.020 to do the right thing we can't make them whole but maryland did repeal that law and we never

00:05:41.840 exonerated the people that were harmed by it so as well as exonerating them includes a formal

00:05:47.780 apology to those who suffered because they were labeled witches and it says I'm reading this from

00:05:54.240 an article in a newspaper called the Baltimore Banner but they said that similarly to here

00:05:58.360 people were accused often based on personal sort of difficulties between people that were fallouts

00:06:05.360 or there was an issue with religious intolerance they were the wrong type of religion or they

00:06:10.360 weren't practicing the religion the way they wanted to be practicing it or just plain old

00:06:14.640 misogyny um so people are really interested there seems to be a lot of local support for it

00:06:20.160 there is a lawyer um called elizabeth um pulisi shaw i think that's how you pronounce her the

00:06:26.320 first part of her surname um she's a lawyer from howard county and she runs the maryland witches

00:06:32.160 exoneration project website and she brought the idea for the resolution apparently to bagnells

00:06:37.860 they're working together she's quite keen for people that are descendants of the accused witches

00:06:44.040 to get in touch because she makes the point that there's no stigma attached now and people want to

00:06:50.460 know you know sort of links and things and all people might not even realize actually that they

00:06:54.880 were related to those people that were accused of course america's in that situation which is very

00:06:59.260 very different to scotland which is where because they had really good records they can actually

00:07:03.760 find descendants you know provable you know verifiable paperwork blah blah which we just

00:07:09.160 don't have in scotland so it's always that interesting to us isn't it clear that when

00:07:13.540 americans talk about their links they say my great great great great great you know

00:07:17.120 grandmother and they can prove it whereas here people might have an idea that they were related

00:07:23.780 there might be a story that's been passed down through the family they might have a surname in

00:07:27.580 common and come from a particular area and a really good guess that they're related distantly

00:07:32.560 to somebody yeah isn't the proof here that there is in the state as a new entity you'd probably be

00:07:39.580 able to see it was a probability or a possibility but not beyond reasonable doubt no again applying

00:07:45.660 the d job legal i like that um there is mention in this article about a woman who was called

00:07:51.200 mall dyer who was never actually charged legally with being a witch but she was um a herbalist

00:07:58.720 who lived in the county the st mary's county in the late 1600s not not much is known about her but

00:08:05.000 it seems that she was a real woman she got blamed for an epidemic of flu fled into the woods away

00:08:11.240 from a group of villagers who went there determined to burn down her cabin she apparently died of

00:08:17.020 exposure and then that her story became local legend the rock that she clung onto in the woods

00:08:23.260 and people say it might or might not be cursed and there's now um built next to it the st mary's

00:08:30.320 county historical society um and there's there's various interesting stories about it one of them

00:08:36.840 which i think you'll find interesting claire is that she's supposedly a source of the inspiration

00:08:42.800 for the blair witch project film which is set in maryland um but have it sorry to sort of spoil it

00:08:50.920 the co-director of the film eduardo sanchez said that they only found out about the slim

00:08:55.380 similarities after they'd filmed those that believe in magic might suggest there's no such

00:09:00.080 thing as coincidences i couldn't possibly comment on that um so one of the things that's nice about

00:09:07.700 the the maryland issue is that the resolution that bagnell's put together includes and this

00:09:13.180 is a quote from it those who were indicted forced to flee banished or acquitted who continued to

00:09:20.380 live with their reputations destroyed and their family names tarnished so what's really nice about

00:09:25.220 that is it covers people like mall dyer but the people that were accused and it maybe didn't go

00:09:29.820 anywhere or in fact where there could have been sort of mob justice um where you know it wasn't

00:09:36.020 done through law and people might have been injured or killed or you know like they're saying

00:09:40.060 they're banished or whatever so i think that's i think that's really interesting i'd be really keen

00:09:44.120 to speak to them and see what their experiences of that because there's been like several of these

00:09:49.520 different cases in america where there's modern day people that realize in the same way that we

00:09:55.140 have that no this is a wrong that needs to be righted and that there's no time limit on justice

00:09:59.740 as you would say maybe claire absolutely and that this is something that's really worth doing

00:10:04.540 particularly now in the context of what is happening and what is about to happen in america

00:10:11.880 um it's very important to remember it because as we keep saying it serves as a warning i mean it

00:10:17.940 really does um and i mean there's a there's a really horrible kind of darkness behind the door

00:10:25.140 that's just about to happen in america and it's already happening but it'll happen very soon

00:10:29.820 that is such a writer's description the darkness behind the door look at us both flexing our

00:10:35.560 other selves isn't it i'm surprised at this stage in january that i've got any thoughts left in my

00:10:42.380 brain i feel like a mannequin that's just moving around doing things at the moment

00:10:46.500 not ideal it really is well this mannequin's this mannequin's doing a podcast and you're doing very

00:10:51.400 well no it's really it's really exciting to hear more people are looking for their across in the

00:10:57.180 us they have exonerations we can't have exonerations here we can have apologies which

00:11:02.240 we've had we can have pardons um and it really does focus the mind and hopefully when we get

00:11:07.220 them on once again we'll be able to focus on um part of the aims of this campaign which is

00:11:13.940 to pardon those who were convicted and have um the document that everybody contributed to in

00:11:21.060 such a a positive way the um the campaign document that was lodged at parliament um and hopefully

00:11:28.680 this year's way yeah no and i was i was about to say that um there'll be some people maybe that

00:11:36.740 are listening that are thinking you know what about us that believe um some stories that came

00:11:41.640 out last year that said that oh yeah the issue had been kicked what's that phrase kicked into

00:11:46.340 the weeds kicked into the long grass yeah it's not it's still it's still in play um we've got

00:11:54.420 a fantastic colleague who is beavering away um and making different connections and things so

00:12:00.260 hopefully we'll have some news about that within uh this calendar year i really don't i was going

00:12:05.720 to say yeah within the calendar year i was like zoe i think our listeners are very very kind to us

00:12:10.840 and we if if if having a relationship between yourself and the listener is all to do with trust

00:12:16.180 we have quite frankly violated that trust several times by giving time skills that we just couldn't

00:12:21.220 keep to now listen i'm just going to argue a small point here right it's only a violation

00:12:26.960 of trust if you've done it on purpose okay we are just bumbling along in this experience called

00:12:35.020 life trying our best for two middle class women just doing their best the way i say frequently

00:12:41.080 to my children i'm just a woman trying her best that's all i can do and you're like that i'm just

00:12:47.840 a man we're just men just what is it we're just in just an innocent normal man just innocent men

00:12:54.740 speaking of which claire yes maybe we should talk about would you pick off corner

00:13:01.820 just innocent normal i like how you've put in will you please feck off corner i think what 0.63

00:13:09.760 we decided to call it although you know it changes every week will you just feck off corner 0.85

00:13:15.080 now zoe to be perfectly honest between the last time that we did anything and now quite frankly

00:13:21.700 there's been so many people that i have mentally put in that corner that i would like have to buy

00:13:27.740 a new four-bedroomed house to find some more corners to put more folk in i think essentially

00:13:33.740 they're we're we're in the corner and they're taking up most of the space at the moment that's

00:13:39.660 what it feels like anyway i'm still bravely battling on on twitter stroke x despite the fact

00:13:46.100 that lots of other people are saying to me you need to stop using it it's really bad you know

00:13:50.160 i just feel like there needs to be some people on there going not to things that are said i think

00:13:55.560 that's really important even if that's pointless god knows if there's anyone thrown enough to stay

00:14:01.100 there till the end so i'm gonna keep going until it burns to the ground and i will enjoy seeing 0.97

00:14:07.560 some really fantastic repartee from clever people to stupid people that happens hourly on there is 0.92

00:14:14.800 it is it is quite funny but also very disturbing because you can see you can see the rise just as 0.98

00:14:21.640 there was during the trials with the witch accusations the rise of um a very right-wing

00:14:28.940 sort of authoritative very male energy what i would call big d energy and as as i was thinking

00:14:36.080 this week is often men that don't actually have it but think they have it and then are emulating it

00:14:42.580 by just showing around and i suggest that big d energy might be sarcastic i i mean

00:14:50.180 i just feel like all these guys are walking around is it and there is guys are walking around well

00:14:56.840 with a few with a few kind of pick me girls which i think is probably very similar to what will have

00:15:02.400 happened during the witch trials as well you'll have had some women we know this some women that

00:15:06.860 got involved because they wanted to be part of the authority they wanted to be part of the group

00:15:12.060 they were in control i'm sure there were some that were scared and so hidden kind of plain sight by

00:15:17.580 taking the aggressor side and i think that's just the nature and psychology of patriarchy

00:15:21.920 but you can see that just now but it is mostly mostly it's men who take exception to women and

00:15:28.920 i was going to do say more with that sentence like women getting degrees women having jobs

00:15:34.080 women having opinions with women full stop just talk about women so who we're putting 1.00

00:15:40.320 with that intro 0.95

00:15:41.800 who could we possibly talk about

00:15:44.320 we could talk about a man

00:15:46.580 who just

00:15:47.740 sailed into British politics

00:15:50.320 and the

00:15:52.160 owner, is he the owner of X

00:15:53.960 I mean is he the owner of X

00:15:55.500 the owner of X who sailed into British

00:15:58.380 politics calling one

00:16:00.440 of our own female MPs 0.98

00:16:02.700 an evil witch 1.00

00:16:04.660 and that is 0.98

00:16:06.140 Mr. Elon Musk

00:16:08.800 i feel we should have some kind of like music or something like that behind it

00:16:15.800 i feel like we need to expand our music development department there's a couple

00:16:20.560 tunes needing developed at the moment indeed indeed well the reason i mean there's lots of

00:16:26.540 reasons we put him in the corner but the particular reason for this is that elon musk

00:16:33.020 decided to involve himself in a political debate about child grooming gangs and he decided that

00:16:43.160 of all the people that he was going to pick on was the female MP who people have victims and

00:16:50.840 other women's rights organisations have come out and supported to say that she was an evil witch

00:16:59.600 amongst other things there were other horrendous things he said about her but he did so on the

00:17:06.460 basis that he was purporting to care about women and children's rights now exactly exactly so

00:17:16.180 there's a high chance that he's fathered so many children that he has no contact with anymore he

00:17:21.340 doesn't know what they're actually getting up to well um i don't know if anyone saw but there was

00:17:27.020 an interview on channel four with Kathy Newman and Jess Phillips um and there was a conversation

00:17:34.880 about what had happened to her as a result of him making these allegations against her and what she

00:17:42.540 says is I've had to make changes to my life now she went on not to be able to to say what it was

00:17:48.860 because presumably there were safety issues that she was that she was having as a result of

00:17:54.540 threats given to her by Elon Musk calling her an evil witch and quote rape genocide apologist.

00:18:04.340 Now what happened after that allegation was made was there was a huge pylon against her on Twitter

00:18:12.140 X and that she says that basically in the middle of this storm she's had to make significant

00:18:20.880 changes to her life and she says and you have to consider risk in these situations but I won't

00:18:26.980 actually let it change my life I've got a job to do and I'm going to crack on with that job and

00:18:32.020 Cathy Newman says but there's an element of fear in your life now that there wasn't before

00:18:36.740 and she said the element of fear that has existed in my life since the moment I was elected

00:18:41.480 since the moment I was a woman who spoke up for other women and girls the element of risk it's

00:18:46.880 just elevated a bit of late now horrific that she's in this situation now where she's had to

00:18:54.600 make those changes but also she makes the point that there was already an element of risk of being

00:18:59.880 woman a woman in public life and this is after after joe cox was killed yeah yeah you know some

00:19:07.300 years ago and like not that many years ago you know like fairly recently you know like it's

00:19:11.860 completely insane that just because she is a politician that men feel that they can make 0.96

00:19:17.440 threats against her to rape her to kill her to hurt her family kathy newman said in the interview 0.97

00:19:24.900 she put it to her and she said elon musk launched this attack after you rebuffed oldham council's 0.99

00:19:30.080 request for an inquiry into historical abuse in the town and she said to her in terms do you stand

00:19:35.800 by that decision not to hold an inquiry um and jess phillips says so first and foremost i didn't

00:19:41.640 rebuff their request what was suggested was that they do an independent local inquiry because I

00:19:47.440 was part of the Telford inquiry I supported the victims of the Telford inquiry before the inquiry

00:19:52.920 in fact for many years before and then during the inquiry and what I saw happen in Telford

00:19:58.500 and thought they should have a national inquiry sorry and what I saw in Telford and and I thought

00:20:04.340 they should have a national inquiry before what I saw was a process that put the victims at the

00:20:09.260 heart of it they led it it felt completely responsive but much more than that it led to

00:20:14.740 changes and that's what I want to see in Oldham so I didn't rebuff them having I said that they

00:20:20.060 should do what Telford had done because it's based on actual experience in the field and actually 1.00

00:20:25.440 knowing what changes things and what doesn't so you know we're seeing a situation where a woman

00:20:34.360 in public life has has actively tried to assist women and girls in respect of something has been

00:20:42.940 involved with campaigning and as I said before there are various groups that have turned up

00:20:46.640 and supported Jess Phillips and says she's spoken for us but with this comment of her being an evil

00:20:54.120 witch and this apologist comment she has suffered in public life a her a horrendous turning on of

00:21:03.880 of people and she's placed in fear this is you know when when you talk about a witch hunt

00:21:11.700 if being a man it would have been described as a witch hunt absolutely because we don't

00:21:19.220 tend to use that term as a as willy-nilly shall we say

00:21:23.540 so willy nilly um with the emphasis on willy

00:21:29.780 so who is going in this corner this particular weekend 0.69

00:21:36.600 is none other than elon musk he can just go and take his army of racists yes with them yeah

00:21:49.940 because they don't really care about women and girls like well if they did they wouldn't be

00:21:54.560 threatening jess phillips if they cared about the truth if they cared about women's safety 0.91

00:22:01.560 the really good way to do that is not threaten a woman i mean he's got shit tons of money if 0.96

00:22:07.420 you're that bothered plow some money into rape crisis centers plow some money into into things 0.85

00:22:13.240 for women and girls like particularly young teenage girls so they're kept safe so that they

00:22:18.500 are that they've got busy and good activities after school so they're not taken advantage of

00:22:23.680 by men and just be really honest about it and actually understand the facts that living in the

00:22:28.260 UK you are far far far far far more likely to be sexually assaulted by a white man that is known

00:22:35.260 to your family I mean that's the actual story here right I'm not I'm not going to keep going on 0.71

00:22:40.540 because actually I can feel myself getting really angry and I'm just going to be chill I'm going to

00:22:46.200 be chill Claire. Okay so we've put him in the corner. He's very much in the corner. Very much

00:22:52.400 in the corner. Yes yes. And now Zoe. Yes. Moving from the 20th the 21st century and will you just

00:23:04.680 feck off corner let's go to another corner of Europe France. Oh en France oui madame. I like

00:23:13.840 how you seeked into your french accent there i'll do i'll do a fake french accent at the drop of a

00:23:19.240 chapeau as you well know claire oh dear oh dear see if we can possibly get through this

00:23:24.660 see if we can if we can possibly get through this without zoe uh expressing any of our views

00:23:33.260 in french this would be all good but i fear we may have some no i'll be sensible i'll be sensible

00:23:39.480 Okay, okay. So, because we're going to be speaking about the Pellico trial after this, I thought what we would do is look at what the witch trials were like in France. And again, as we said at the outset, we may try and find someone from France to come on and speak to us.

00:23:58.620 But basically, between 1550 and 1700, we researched and found out that France had about 2,000 witch trials with most of the people that were accused as witches.

00:24:11.760 Do you think they were men or women, Zoe? 1.00

00:24:13.680 I'm going to guess they had vaginas. 1.00

00:24:16.780 They were, please. 1.00

00:24:19.840 No, no, they don't.

00:24:21.100 But that is it.

00:24:21.860 No, no.

00:24:22.720 so about around 2 000 witch trials um with most of the accused being women the first recorded

00:24:31.080 witch trial in france was in 1390 the trial of jean de brogue which resulted sadly in her execution

00:24:39.260 in 1670 at 1670 louis the 14th the reason why i'm saying 14th zoe is because x1y1b written don't

00:24:51.840 yeah yeah so i had to that wasn't that wasn't the greatest was it i should really have done

00:24:57.240 no no well done you because i would have still been totting it up in my head i'd be like was

00:25:01.220 louis the 16th is iv4 or six i know i could have called him louis x iv that's i could have called

00:25:09.660 him that so um interestingly enough whereas our our king james was going about shouting burn the

00:25:17.660 witch and having everyone killed it was in fact Louis himself apparently who intervened to bring

00:25:25.660 witchcraft trials executions to a halt and intervened and had them stopped and it was said

00:25:32.520 that a royal edict after the last witchcraft trial is often considered in France to mark the official

00:25:38.620 end of those witchcraft trials. The same problem in France as we have in Scotland was that there

00:25:45.960 was very very poor record keeping because witch hunts were a local phenomena dealt with by the

00:25:51.680 local whatever the equivalent of the local borough is the local veal and as a result most of the

00:25:58.760 records weren't kept so in France again the amounts that we're talking about here are very very vague

00:26:05.860 and it was said that the witchcraft trials in France were affected by historical events going

00:26:13.680 on at the time and and interestingly the french had a slightly different um religious aspect to

00:26:22.260 the witchcraft trials as we know in scotland what happened is the reformation came in the um

00:26:29.100 john the fort sorry i'll if you can edit that that would be great um the witchcraft act was

00:26:39.660 brought in by the new Protestant government and it was implemented by amongst others John Knox the

00:26:45.740 leading Protestant of his day but in France in fact it was more complicated. The Protestant

00:26:52.580 Reformation it was said impacted upon the accusation of witches but in fact when the

00:26:57.920 Protestant Reformation came in it was said that the number of witchcraft accusations actually

00:27:03.640 decreased along interestingly with the number of publications on the topic of witchcraft

00:27:10.240 and the reason for that was this coincided with Martin Luther and other reformers publishing

00:27:17.960 critiques on papal authority and challenging the authority of the Catholic Church. So because they

00:27:25.720 were challenging the Catholic Church people were saying maybe actually the Catholic Church

00:27:30.960 endorsing the idea of witches isn't actually true. So strangely enough, although in Scotland

00:27:37.860 the Reformation led the charge to witchcraft accusations, over in France the undermining

00:27:44.860 of the Catholic Church by the Protestant reformers meant that people were less likely

00:27:50.820 to believe the witchcraft accusations. It did point out, while it was discussing this in one

00:27:59.380 of the articles that I read that Malleus Maleficarum still did have a very large impact

00:28:07.000 upon Europe and France as well when the witchcraft trials were on and it said that the Malleus

00:28:15.420 Maleficarum was the best-selling book, we'll talk about best-selling books later Zoe, the best-selling

00:28:24.340 book for over 100 years in Europe. Can you imagine that? So what type of people were accused of

00:28:33.720 witchcraft in France? Well, as a surprise, the type of people that were accused of witchcraft,

00:28:41.120 mostly women, were usually people who were accused of things by their neighbours. They

00:28:49.380 were tortured in order to elicit confessions and the women targeted were described as typically

00:28:55.440 marginalised women such as spinsters, widows or those without a male protector. Again the same 0.90

00:29:03.180 sort of stories as we find in Scotland although of course as we know sadly anyone could be accused

00:29:08.640 of witchcraft. During the course of the witchcraft accusations in France there were a lot

00:29:18.100 of trials which we don't have records of but we do have records of some of them and in fact

00:29:25.340 the best kept records that would appear in Normandy in northern France and Zoe there was

00:29:32.580 one that I wanted to cite to you was one of the earliest ones again it was about

00:29:39.520 about a relationship which had gone wrong between lovers and I'll read this out and

00:29:48.600 I might say that this is read from the Library of Congress online which sets out these details.

00:29:59.200 The case of Margot de la Barre and Marion de la Doitour were the two women first interrogated

00:30:07.480 in relation to an accusation of witchcraft and this was very early on in the 14th century 1390.

00:30:14.660 The accusation against them was the casting of a spell on the former lover of Marian and his wife.

00:30:21.480 To regain her lover, Marian had been advised by a friend to share a drink with her former lover

00:30:27.920 made of a few drops of her menstrual blood mixed with red wine.

00:30:33.380 margot said she'd obtained two recipes the first based on herbs gathered during the magical night

00:30:39.760 of saint john which was to provoke impotence with her former lover and the wife and the second 0.98

00:30:46.120 was intended to arouse desire for her again which involved roasting the testicles of a white rooster 0.99

00:30:52.540 grinding them into a powder and putting it in his pillow for nine days before mixing it with his 0.99

00:30:59.080 food and wine. By themselves these misdeeds were confessed by the accused at their first questioning

00:31:05.740 and did not merit the death penalty but after search sessions in the torture chamber both

00:31:13.000 admitted that they'd done this as witches and had invoked the devil and therefore both of them

00:31:19.720 were executed. The reason I picked out that particular trial Zoe was it caught my eye about

00:31:26.060 the the story of menstrual blood being used in the witch's spell and when i spoke to you about it

00:31:33.820 you said that that's something which occurs in later ideas of women current ideas i have seen

00:31:43.060 i mean i've obviously not done this obviously but there is there is stuff that i've seen on uh on

00:31:49.800 like reels and stuff like that where where young women well women i suppose not necessarily that

00:31:55.080 young woman um have talked about putting menstrual bloods in this is so gross in like 0.93

00:32:02.900 bolognese type sauce like tomatoey sauces feeding it to your boyfriend and then it supposedly

00:32:09.780 gives you this power to then be like in his mind and he thinks about you all the time because

00:32:15.260 you're kind of like bonded i tell you what see if someone did that to me i'd think about them

00:32:19.760 all the time i think they're nuts and i would take my orders on them not to come anywhere near me

00:32:25.560 yes yeah that's why i would think about them all the time but i think that's the kind of like

00:32:30.380 there's like an aspect of like modern day sort of ideas about magic and stuff like that i'm not sure

00:32:35.400 if these women would necessarily see themselves as witches and obviously it's probably entirely

00:32:40.640 just an urban myth i really hope okay no hope but which part of is the urban myth the idea that it

00:32:47.440 was happening or i mean i mean i doubt that putting your period blood in somebody's bolognese

00:32:55.140 would make them think about it all the time but then i i don't know maybe i mean if you believed

00:33:00.160 in magic i don't who knows who knows i would presume you do it without their consent i mean

00:33:05.780 you're not saying to them hello please don't do it first of all i think it's an assault i think

00:33:10.360 it's an assault if you're doing it without their consent and you know health and safety issues

00:33:15.060 you're not an employer but i really do feel that that's that's kind of a

00:33:19.140 would it i mean i don't know what the hygiene aspects are of i mean the hygiene aspects are

00:33:27.540 just don't do it i mean i wouldn't do it i don't know yeah i don't think i'm painful at this age

00:33:33.100 anyway but anywho i'm not going into too much detail but um yeah i mean we can take firm use

00:33:40.700 in some things and that's definitely one i think i'm definitely seeing no very gross

00:33:45.580 no it's horrid but what happened in france though that's the story was that was one of the things

00:33:52.180 they were accused of which is it's pretty compelling isn't it because the idea about

00:33:55.780 women and periods and the fear of women and you know sexuality and fertility and you know it's a

00:34:04.040 big love triangle story and you know it's it's like really compelling you could imagine that

00:34:09.000 it would have really gripped people that story yeah well one thing as well about it is like

00:34:14.620 doing all those things they did all those things and they cast those spells and that wasn't going

00:34:21.080 to get them the an execution and then they get tortured they said ah yeah we did invoke the

00:34:29.100 devil and then like oh you invoke the devil sorry about that that's demonic possession you're a 0.87

00:34:34.140 witch and now you must die so putting using the menstrual blood in itself wouldn't have been 0.64

00:34:40.200 necessarily problematic was because the devil was involved in the process yes like just as exactly

00:34:45.640 as in scotland i suppose it said that the very closely tied with witchcraft was the idea of

00:34:51.120 demonic possession and the more we've read about it and written on it in our new book

00:34:56.500 the more we see the idea of the possession of the woman by the devil

00:35:03.920 the fact that she was his vessel

00:35:05.560 the fact that she still had no power

00:35:08.200 that it was the devil working through her

00:35:11.380 and allowing the devil to work through her

00:35:14.620 was really, really important

00:35:17.360 and it was really important in France

00:35:19.560 I would just say one other thing

00:35:22.280 about some of the last trials that took place

00:35:24.920 which were in Normandy

00:35:26.280 again

00:35:27.160 near Rouen

00:35:29.880 it was kind of marked one of the last

00:35:32.320 bout of witchcraft accusations

00:35:34.320 and strangely enough bucking the trend

00:35:36.580 even though we said at the start 0.93

00:35:37.860 that the vast majority of them were women

00:35:39.860 in these last witchcraft trials

00:35:42.220 it says intriguingly that most of the

00:35:44.440 accused were men and they were shepherds

00:35:46.940 yeah

00:35:47.700 so I'm not sure, it doesn't

00:35:50.420 give us any more information than that

00:35:52.120 so if we do manage to find a French

00:35:54.360 expert in the witchcraft trials i'd kind of like to know how shepherds got to be in situations where

00:36:01.060 they're being accused of witchcraft i mean i suppose that shepherds uh i'm a full um disclosure

00:36:08.140 i don't know anything about this i'm just freestyling what the idea might have been

00:36:11.880 i'm imagining that shepherds were away from the rest of the community for long periods of time

00:36:17.020 and were away you know up in the hills and in the mountains and that sort of thing and might

00:36:21.000 have been seen potentially as maybe a little bit peculiar and that it was the company of you know

00:36:25.520 small groups of men potentially i don't know maybe they were outcast in the same way that

00:36:30.360 you saw women that were outcasts being accused we just weren't a firm member of the society

00:36:36.640 the community which they were in and therefore sort of easy to pick on yeah i'd not even i'd

00:36:43.120 not have thought of um a shepherd as being an anti-social job oh yeah definitely i mean we're

00:36:50.240 not talking about like one man and his dog type shepherds i'm talking about like shepherds that

00:36:54.920 lived away from the community for long periods of time this is entirely based on novels i've read

00:37:00.820 though oh dear by shepherds and not modern day shepherds but like you know like the idea of

00:37:06.540 shepherds in the olden days was that they were they were away from the community for really long

00:37:12.120 periods of time i'm confidently just carrying on with this line of thought yeah just do that do

00:37:19.680 that lead lead lead the um lead the listeners like like the very sheep of the shepherds

00:37:26.360 if there are any shepherds listening who have got an insight into that please let us know

00:37:32.460 i think we should move on we should we should move on but before we move on i think we should

00:37:38.220 remember those women in france that were accused of witches that most definitely weren't that

00:37:43.700 witches and that peed with their lives we must remember all those that were accused as women

00:37:48.840 not witches. Yeah absolutely and so let's move on to modern day France. We've got a really 0.99

00:37:55.480 interesting interview today I think which as we said before on the face of it it's not directly

00:38:01.580 about witches but it is about the way in which women can be treated and diminished and this is

00:38:06.840 as Claire's already mentioned distressing at times so we would have no negative judgment of you if

00:38:12.880 you thought no this is not for me I'm strictly here for the witch content and we will go back

00:38:17.500 straight away to which content again next week but we thought this was very timely and something

00:38:22.140 that we really wanted to talk about when you know hello we are absolutely delighted to have today

00:38:28.580 a special guest who is coming to us from i believe france is this true yes bonsoir or bonjour depending

00:38:38.100 on which time of the day this goes out bonjour everything because it's a podcast people could

00:38:43.540 listen to it anytime so it's all been exactly like that so today is on the face of it we were

00:38:49.020 just saying not the most obvious witch angled story but I think it will become clear during

00:38:54.820 our conversation exactly why it is we've invited our guest on today I'm actually going to ask our

00:39:00.220 guest to introduce herself and tell us why it is that she is here today. Well my name's Annette

00:39:06.240 Young and I'm the host and creator of the 51% a show about the women who are reshaping our world

00:39:12.740 which is broadcast every Friday, a fresh edition of France 24 English.

00:39:17.960 And if you're interested in what we do, and I'm sure if you're listening to this one,

00:39:21.860 but assume you might be interested in what we do, you can find us on france24.com.

00:39:28.340 Just type in the 51%, the title of which, believe it or not, it might be obvious to some,

00:39:34.360 but it's not obvious to many.

00:39:36.200 Why 51%?

00:39:37.440 because in many parts of the world women make up 51% of the population 1.00

00:39:42.060 but sadly do not have the equal amount of representation be it 0.97

00:39:47.160 in the field of politics, business, you name it, you know,

00:39:51.520 and I'm sure given who I'm talking to, you're very well aware

00:39:55.340 of the issues that we cover.

00:39:57.660 One of which, one of the most wonderful specials we did was back

00:40:01.920 in 2022, would you believe that?

00:40:04.580 Oh, my God.

00:40:05.560 Really?

00:40:05.920 It was not long ago.

00:40:06.940 That long ago, where I came to Scotland and interviewed Zoe and Claire about their work for Witches of Scotland, and we dedicated a whole show to the subject, and we loved it.

00:40:19.480 We had a grand old time, except it was raining in August.

00:40:24.020 I remember we met at the house in Dundee, and it was absolutely dirty, to use a good Scottish term.

00:40:31.960 just as a side note for a long complicated reason I had just managed to get my French

00:40:42.680 driver's license I had had an Australian driver's license and you can tell from my accent that's

00:40:48.680 where I'm from but I had to let it expire so long short of it is I had to because of bureaucracy

00:40:55.520 see here in France reset the whole French driver's test and so the first time I had got back into a

00:41:02.880 car apart from the test itself for a long drive was driving up to meet you and the weather was

00:41:11.100 horrific and I was with my crew and I just kept thinking I hope they have no idea that's been a

00:41:17.460 long time oh no well i'm glad you got there to get up there to get up to see us we know that 1.00

00:41:25.340 we know that the french have got more than i think in our experience i think claire tell me

00:41:31.000 if you think this is wrong but they've had more of an interest in our campaign and about the idea

00:41:36.400 of witches both of the historic sort and of modern day interpretations than i think just about any

00:41:42.180 other country apart from maybe america so i think we've had a lot of french interest also catalonia

00:41:48.360 who took her campaign and then pardon there which is quite close historical ties between the two

00:41:54.860 countries obviously the merry coin of scots you know and i i think the french feel a a greater

00:42:01.340 affinity i may say towards scotland than maybe your sassanac neighbors i don't know all the lions

00:42:09.040 the old alliance between Scotland and France the person who signed the Witchcraft Act was

00:42:13.820 Mary Queen of Scots but of course she married the Dauphin of France and there's where my history

00:42:19.420 knowledge ends. Yeah but I think that's okay that'll do that'll do that. So what in particular 0.67

00:42:30.900 are we going to talk about today then? Claire? Well I contacted Annette because I saw that she

00:42:40.620 had been following the Pellico trial and I wanted to understand from her what the current feeling

00:42:50.760 is in France in relation to whether or not this is a huge pivotal moment because when we met the

00:42:57.960 last time in that graveyard in 2022 we talked about the me too movement we talked about 0.98

00:43:05.580 why it was important to remember the history of women because women are still not equal in society 0.96

00:43:12.160 and there are still deep grain societal problems and we talked about misogyny here the misogyny in

00:43:19.520 france and you know sadly we had similar stories although i think the misogyny in in the uk is is

00:43:29.040 slightly more subtle now than it is in france but it it doesn't mean that it's not there in scotland

00:43:35.220 it just means that it's not as perhaps obvious as to detect as it currently still is in france

00:43:40.860 and i i just wanted to take the opportunity to to find out what the view of of you and it was on

00:43:47.740 these things. Now you and I have talked about the Pellico case a lot so we both know what we're

00:43:52.340 talking about but it might be helpful if Annette if you could give us a kind of a brief overview

00:43:56.220 for anybody that doesn't live their lives terminally online like we do. Mind you I would

00:44:02.880 probably argue that Giselle Pellico is probably the most famous French woman these days short of

00:44:09.240 Marie Antoinette because of the nature of this case and the horrific story that we heard about

00:44:17.320 what she'd been subjected to. Just in short, back in 2020, a retired electrician by the name of

00:44:27.240 Dominic Pellico was picked up by a security guard in a supermarket in the south of France

00:44:32.360 because he had been filming women upskirting, as they call it, which is effectively where you put

00:44:38.120 a camera or drop the mobile phone camera so that you can film underneath their skirts and dresses.

00:44:44.480 and a very savvy security guard saw what was happening,

00:44:49.560 confronted him.

00:44:50.400 In fact, there's even imagery,

00:44:53.060 there's a video of the actual conversation they had

00:44:56.480 because somebody recorded it and reported him to the police.

00:45:01.060 As a result, the police went to visit Dominic Pellico,

00:45:06.460 initially obviously he was detained,

00:45:08.680 but they then went to visit his house and seized his computers

00:45:11.540 and, to their horror, discovered thousands upon thousands of files

00:45:17.640 of his wife, who has since divorced him, Giselle Pelico,

00:45:24.880 being sexually abused by strangers that he had recruited online.

00:45:29.760 More importantly, the other horrific element of this story

00:45:33.460 is the fact that he drugged her unconscious.

00:45:36.740 And this happened over a period, best part of a decade, they believe,

00:45:40.600 So at that time, it began when they were still living

00:45:44.280 in the outskirts of Paris and then they retired

00:45:46.660 and moved to Mazin in the south of France,

00:45:51.100 not far from Avignon where the court trial was heard.

00:45:55.460 And through the internet managed to recruit dozens

00:46:00.180 of strangers and entice them to come and have sex 0.90

00:46:04.340 with his wife, even though she was completely unconscious. 0.75

00:46:08.960 so after discovering this they called Giselle to the police station sat her down and she watched

00:46:18.880 what they had just themselves uncovered and obviously was devastated oh my god they actually

00:46:26.420 showed her in the police station what happened they did and so this bits and pieces about this

00:46:34.900 trial started to emerge when the arrests were made. But we had no idea as to the sheer numbers

00:46:43.960 of men involved until the trial got underway in Avignon in early September 2024. And that's when

00:46:52.220 it really just hit the headlines. They managed to detain somewhere around 51 men, one of which

00:46:59.660 was Dominic Pelico, who's now 72, they believe that there was at least another 20 who had

00:47:06.840 participated, but they were unable to identify them. So there are 20 men out there, possibly,

00:47:14.140 who know what they've done, but have yet to be picked up or arrested by the police.

00:47:19.180 And these weren't necessarily men that were already sex offenders, I mean, you know,

00:47:24.140 convicted sex offenders. No, I mean, some of them, as we discovered through the course of trial,

00:47:29.260 did have some previous, you know, offences,

00:47:33.860 but the bulk of them were, as the French media dubbed them,

00:47:37.020 Monsieur Toulamande, Mr Everybody, Mr Everyman.

00:47:40.560 And they ranged in ages from 24 to 72.

00:47:44.960 They were, you know, the bulk of them were in relationships,

00:47:50.040 married, fathers.

00:47:52.920 One was a journalist, one was an IT consultant,

00:47:55.800 another was a firefighter.

00:47:58.180 the you know truck drivers or men just walking amongst people in their villages and towns and

00:48:04.320 cities just living their lives and you used the word earlier that he dominic um pelico enticed

00:48:11.880 the men and i was thinking yeah it's interesting because there can't have been much persuasion

00:48:17.800 involved like these these men was you don't surely i mean i'm not a pervert so i'm not sure

00:48:24.260 entirely how this would work i'm glad you specified that in advance just because there was people

00:48:29.840 were unsure about my pervert standing i'm not a pervert but i would imagine that you don't you're

00:48:35.400 not just in a golf chat on somewhere on the internet and a guy goes hey do you want to come 0.90

00:48:40.320 around to have sex with my wife while she's drugs these guys are presumably going and looking for

00:48:44.560 other absolutely and there are groups that they were on a um a website called coco.fr which has

00:48:52.920 been shut down by authorities because it's sort of basically operates in the dark web

00:48:56.740 and there was a forum called without her knowledge oh god and and that's where he

00:49:05.840 recruited these men but the the thing i just want to underline here these were not men who came from

00:49:13.760 all points of france they all lived within 30 minutes driving range of their home yeah so these

00:49:21.380 were just the local men that decided to take part in this. If we extrapolate it, we assume

00:49:28.500 in that particular area, it's not got some particular interest in that. And therefore,

00:49:34.640 if we extrapolate that over the whole course of France and of the world, that is horrifying.

00:49:43.640 And I think that is the most horrendous element of this story is the nature of who these people

00:49:50.980 laugh we have heard it a lot of times and particularly to people like ourselves who

00:49:56.640 report on feminist issues that the bulk of perpetrators of you know sexual violence are

00:50:03.900 known to the victim or you know operate within the community or it was somewhere i think what 0.79

00:50:10.900 makes this horrible was first of all she did not know them apparently there's one that she

00:50:15.660 vaguely knew but she'd never come across any of these men but they lived in her community they

00:50:21.560 lived close to her home and so it's not even as if he insisted that they um used protection

00:50:30.460 you know that there she she apparently has stis as a result of her had stis was one man who

00:50:37.180 was hiv positive he refused to wear a condom i mean what did what could dominique pellico

00:50:44.120 possibly have thought would happen that he would just get away with it forever I mean I suppose

00:50:47.620 he got away with it for 10 years we know that there's a history of women not being taken

00:50:53.180 seriously by a lot of medical professionals and we know that Giselle Pelico had gone to her

00:50:57.840 doctors in various points and said I don't feel right there's something wrong here but I am sure

00:51:03.220 it will have been shrugged off as it'll just be the menopause it's post-menopause this is what

00:51:07.980 happens to them and you're getting older she probably thought she was starting to get dementia

00:51:11.820 or something she did she did and in a couple of cases he accompanied her to these appointments

00:51:17.620 and even went with her to have an MRI of her brain um so it's it's the the more you know in

00:51:26.780 so many layers it has so many points about the patriarchy and the failure of society to

00:51:33.060 acknowledge women be it reporting sexual assault but we're not talking about that we're talking

00:51:38.440 as you say just even the normal day-to-day things of somebody coming in saying i'm suffering from

00:51:43.240 memory loss my children are concerned you know i had registered stis um and nobody had connected

00:51:54.180 the dots because how could you possibly unless they didn't test her for stis and they kept putting

00:52:01.440 it down to other things you know how how else could you explain away getting stis other than

00:52:07.120 the fact that your partner is having sex with somebody else

00:52:09.300 or the most bizarre idea, which is that somebody is having sex

00:52:14.220 without your knowledge, with you.

00:52:16.800 I think, you know, and I don't know the gender of all the doctors

00:52:20.080 because I have to declare at this point I wasn't covering the trial

00:52:23.920 day in and day out.

00:52:25.240 I know that a number of them gave evidence.

00:52:28.200 But again, it's the assumptions that society has

00:52:32.520 that must have been the husband's playing up

00:52:37.420 or having affairs, hasn't told the wife.

00:52:40.140 That's their business and we're not getting involved.

00:52:42.040 It's their business, we won't get involved.

00:52:43.860 But not sort of the memory loss and all these other ailments

00:52:49.020 that she was experiencing.

00:52:51.820 And, you know, so you've got that situation.

00:52:55.420 Of course, that's created a massive debate about, you know,

00:52:59.220 training healthcare officials and professionals as such

00:53:03.380 about to be aware of drug-facilitated sexual assault.

00:53:10.080 And I would say most of our generation are not

00:53:14.480 because it is something that is growing in numbers.

00:53:18.440 And I know in the UK there's been a big thing

00:53:20.920 about drink spiking and so on.

00:53:23.460 But, you know, it's something that has only happened

00:53:26.160 or emerged in the last 10, 15, 20 years, to the best of our knowledge.

00:53:30.320 But having said that, I mean, it's just on so many levels.

00:53:36.420 There's just, as a journalist and as someone observing this story,

00:53:40.620 it's just you look aghast at what you are hearing and listening and witnessing.

00:53:46.620 And you've said that it started cultural conversations, you know, about the medical issues.

00:53:51.000 It's also started a cultural conversation about the definition of rape in France.

00:53:56.400 Now, I don't want to get all technical.

00:53:59.680 Especially with you, Claire.

00:54:01.120 No, but essentially, in France, the lack of consent isn't the central pillar of the crime.

00:54:12.880 That's right.

00:54:13.500 There is no recognition of consent in the current French rape laws.

00:54:21.000 this has sparked a debate that obviously this has to change.

00:54:24.900 But it says, can I just go back a step?

00:54:27.520 Because I think for English-speaking listeners

00:54:31.360 or people who are interested in France would be saying,

00:54:36.580 how is this happening in a country where you have

00:54:40.960 what we call the republican values,

00:54:42.920 les valeurs de republicans, liberté, égalité, fraternity?

00:54:46.200 This is a country that prides itself on supposed equality.

00:54:50.120 But I think for me, having lived here as an Australian for the best part of 14 years now, I realise that France is very way behind the English-speaking world when it comes to women's rights and the way in which women are viewed.

00:55:07.080 And we've seen that with the fact that Roman Polanski could come and live here.

00:55:13.000 We saw that even recently with President Emmanuel Macron being asked about Gerard Depardieu, who we know is facing a number of charges of sexual assault, the trial of which will begin in March, saying, I don't want to take part in a manhunt, when he was asked by a journalist at a press conference about the story.

00:55:37.460 It is, I mean, why is there so much of a difference?

00:55:40.920 I mean, that's probably a potential subject for another podcast, but there is a definite difference.

00:55:49.340 I think it's driven by the Latin culture, but it's also driven by the fact that France has still yet to come to terms with some basic principles of laws protecting women and particularly survivors of sexual assault.

00:56:05.800 Well, hopefully this conversation and what has happened will spur that on. I mean, I know I was reading an article in Politico which said that the definition of the crime is now being reconsidered to add consent because the French law of rape was any act of sexual penetration of any kind whatsoever committed by violence,

00:56:35.520 coercion threat or surprise so technically if you read that um which is violence coercion threat

00:56:44.060 or surprise the issue of consent isn't central to that whereas um our law changed about 20 years ago

00:56:52.840 to say that the issue of consent must be front and center and any crime the idea of that was

00:56:59.620 to not always make it the woman's job to say whether or not she was what she was doing and

00:57:07.500 what all what she was doing but to make the investigation into the issue of consent as being

00:57:13.340 an issue between two parties to throw light on what the man is doing in those circumstances

00:57:19.260 and to say is that what is the understanding between these two parties now of course in cases

00:57:26.060 Like we've got the Pellico case, there would be, and for poor Mrs Giselle Pellico, there would be no question whatsoever that if you make someone unconscious, you don't have their consent.

00:57:39.720 And also in our law, if you spike someone, if they are too unable to consent because of intoxication, even if you haven't spiked them, that overcomes any issue of consent because you wouldn't be spiking someone if you knew they already were consenting to you.

00:58:03.000 so that was a step forward although the law still really struggles with the issue of consent and how

00:58:09.280 you define it um which sounds it sounds really silly you're like surely we know that when we see

00:58:16.760 it but it's it's been really really difficult but in a case such as Gisele Pellico's it's so

00:58:22.280 straightforward but one of the most amazing things that I think she did and one which

00:58:28.220 put a finger on an issue that I've been kind of worried about in dealing with these sorts of

00:58:35.180 crimes for a long time is the the protective way that the law now comes in and says we must protect

00:58:45.020 women we must keep them from any kind of publicity which of course if people want that that's

00:58:53.820 absolutely proper and fine but there was an underlying feeling of shamefulness 0.55

00:59:00.220 but a shame about sex you know and shame about people being sexual people so to talk about sex 1.00

00:59:07.800 it needs to be covered up for the women's benefit because it's ruined her now so her life is ruined 0.58

00:59:15.560 and so to protect her going forward we don't we don't talk about that you know i think that's

00:59:20.560 really interesting yeah i mean i'm not i'm not saying sorry zoete interrupt i'm not saying

00:59:25.520 that if somebody wants their privacy which is entitled to they are absolutely entitled to that

00:59:34.540 but those who want to say no here i am this is what i want to see this is my story this is the

00:59:42.660 way i want to tell it for those that take that route she's an absolute inspiration

00:59:49.420 she is indeed and the fact she waived the right to remain anonymous is another extraordinary

00:59:56.980 element of this story and we would never know about it i mean maybe we'd know about the fact

01:00:01.980 because of the sheer numbers of men i mean they had to build a a special glass enlarged glass

01:00:08.580 box for the courtroom in order to fit them all in so that itself it would have i mean you know

01:00:16.060 it would have attracted attention, but the fact that she, you know, went public. But the thing

01:00:20.700 also is how we treat victims or survivors of sexual assault in court cases. And the fact that

01:00:30.700 you had for the first time, a clearly a grandmother, clearly drugged unconscious, and there's filmed

01:00:39.080 evidence and she still had some rather disturbing questions asked of her by the lawyers representing

01:00:47.900 the defendants so it you know it was a I think for France in general on so many levels suddenly

01:00:56.380 people really started to understand what it meant for a woman to go public with these accusations

01:01:03.360 and the whole process. And the issue of consent, as one of Giselle Pellico's lawyers said,

01:01:11.060 how is it we're in 2024? And these men thought it was perfectly acceptable to accept the statement

01:01:17.980 from Dominic Pellico. Yes, my wife's agreed. Yes, not an issue, not a problem. How can you

01:01:23.620 think that is indeed consent, which means that there's a long way to go in terms of public

01:01:29.340 education and also in terms of just uh i mean that's that's at the very best if you assume

01:01:39.180 that they were thinking oh she consents so that's fine i mean that's that's the best possible way of

01:01:45.280 looking at it and even then that's absolutely horrific but the question has got to be asked

01:01:49.120 how many of them even cared or bothered you know it was just a yes you can say yeah whatever 0.57

01:01:55.260 because we've we've we've accepted porn to such an extent and sex sex work to such an extent

01:02:04.200 that actually it's normalized a whole bunch of behaviors actually are not they're not normal 0.71

01:02:09.340 and they're really unpalatable and you know i want to kink shame anybody you do you sort of thing

01:02:13.520 you do whoever you want to do but we have normalized a lot of stuff that has really

01:02:17.900 like kind of tipped over where you know where that where the line's drawn like i was thinking

01:02:23.560 at the same time as the Giselle Pelico case was going on we had the story of the two women with

01:02:28.960 OnlyFans accounts so there was the one girl where a documentary came about out about her having had

01:02:35.040 sex with a hundred men in one day and anybody who worked with anybody with trauma when you see her

01:02:40.680 talking to the camera she's so clearly traumatized by her experience and she had a team I think of

01:02:46.380 nine people around her and she's she's generating income for them like the women I mean this is

01:02:52.000 really this is the thing that really stuck out for me with this one is that at the end of it she had 0.96

01:02:56.700 really sore eyes because despite the fact that she told them not to some of the men ejaculated on her

01:03:02.700 face and it gone in her eyes right now she's given consent in that situation you'd be hard pressed

01:03:09.280 probably to argue that she hadn't but that's a very clear point of it where she has clearly not

01:03:14.880 given consent but that still happened and then there's the other case of the other young woman

01:03:20.040 who i think is also british that's made a real thing about going and having sex with like 18

01:03:25.640 year old boys and that's that normalizes this whole idea for young boys about this is what 1.00

01:03:31.560 women are women are just there for our gratification they'll do anything as long as i pay the only 1.00

01:03:36.860 fans fee if i want to go and line up with 99 other men and just just to have sex into that 1.00

01:03:42.740 women's body it just it just makes me feel so upset and repelled there was a a great substack 0.83

01:03:50.860 written i think her name is sarah ditum or ditum d-i-t-u-m um she writes the times and the guardian 0.83

01:03:57.960 she's a columnist and author and she was writing about this case and she said just cast your mind 0.79

01:04:04.780 back to 20 25 years ago and if there was some weird guy out there who wanted to have sex with

01:04:11.340 a toaster well you know if you pose the question to any of these friends they would have immediately 0.51

01:04:16.240 you know said that way to a psychiatrist or psychologist or you know you've got to be

01:04:21.600 joking you're off your head fast forward we now have the internet and google and you can just 0.98

01:04:26.960 type in i want to have sex with a toaster and you know goodness knows how many forums pop up 1.00

01:04:31.920 so this is when you're sticking their penises into electrified appliances i mean i'd be all 0.99

01:04:37.860 or the rise of total sex, you know, that would solve a lot 0.99

01:04:43.040 of problems in one way.

01:04:44.980 But, you know, we are so way behind, and I know I would defer

01:04:48.580 to you on this issue, Clare, that laws, legislation,

01:04:53.160 politicians are all playing catch-up literally all the time

01:04:56.800 with all these issues.

01:04:59.280 And secondly, when, you know, we've raised a generation

01:05:02.820 of empowered women, but we've failed to raise a generation

01:05:06.840 of men how to deal with empowered women and in terms of you know and their relationships and

01:05:12.300 how they view women in the 21st century the problem is that the empowered women are actually 0.54

01:05:18.120 empowered to be i don't want to sound like some sort of marxist lunatic here but it's all like a

01:05:23.140 it's about women being empowered to make money from their sexuality right now on the one hand

01:05:30.840 as a as a feminist I argue you know again you do you but it's gone so far in a direction now 0.55

01:05:36.800 where there's so much content and so much of it I understand is free that women are pushed to go 0.90

01:05:42.620 further and further and further and further at the end of the day we're human bodies we're not

01:05:47.340 Elon Musk's sex robots do you know what I mean we have normal human bodies and I just think about

01:05:52.700 poor Giselle Pelico and how much stress and physical pain she must have been under because 0.96

01:05:58.200 if somebody was coming in and having sex with her and she wasn't involved in that then she must have

01:06:03.780 been hurt by it and she must have woken up the next day swollen and in pain and just to not know

01:06:09.780 what was causing that it's so distressing it's so horrible can i say that i think having watched

01:06:18.000 everything that's gone on i am more and more of the view that when women go to court for sexual

01:06:26.080 offences or for violence against them they should have their own legal representation that's what

01:06:32.720 that's i think because we're not what happened before was it certainly in in the uk lawyers

01:06:42.120 could ask any sort of questions and then they're like oh we can't do that so we'll bring in new

01:06:47.220 laws about that and then now complainers you know they can't be asked this question but they can

01:06:52.900 I'll be asked that question and the agency of the person that's involved in the process the person

01:06:58.080 who's seeking justice doesn't have that agency and the more I watch what's happening around the world

01:07:05.160 and the more that I see that violence remains sexual violence and non-sexual violence remains 0.83

01:07:11.120 one of the top problems in the country the more I think when women go to court they need their own

01:07:16.840 lawyers to represent them in a case so you would have the accused but you would have a complainer 0.72

01:07:22.140 and that complainer would have their own lawyer to fight for their rights to give them a voice in

01:07:27.080 court because who's looking after them because the idea that we have is that that the wheels of

01:07:32.880 justice are looking after these women but if and I firmly believe that you if you've been accused

01:07:38.100 of a crime you absolutely should have a lawyer to defend you and I you know innocent till proven

01:07:44.040 guilty etc etc I really really believe in that but at the same time if a woman and we know that this

01:07:49.100 has always happened and still happens it happened was as you've already alluded to with Gisele

01:07:53.700 Pellico that the defence will drag the women to try and you know often cause a case Claire tell

01:07:59.900 me if I've got this wrong but to cause doubt in the in the court's mind that this woman's telling

01:08:04.680 well actually Zoe in Scotland that was historically the case that women were allowed to be asked 0.95

01:08:11.260 anything and then the law over time changed and then the courts became more fierce at enforcing

01:08:18.240 the law so now it's very very much the case that any questions asked of a woman in a court

01:08:24.480 are are basically sieved through the court system first so they can be vetted so the questions are

01:08:31.980 there the difficulty always is of course if someone's saying I have been sexually assaulted

01:08:37.520 and the person accused is saying no you haven't there always has to be a test because of the

01:08:42.800 system that that we work in is adversarial so there are going to be questions but for the most

01:08:48.020 But for the greatest part, those ought to now be very much assessed by the court, which is why when you watch TV shows where defence counsel are allowed to rip into complainers asking all sorts of inappropriate questions, I get really annoyed because I think if people think this is how it is, if they're watching it in Scotland, I can only speak for Scotland,

01:09:11.740 people will be put off making the complaint

01:09:14.860 because they think they will be questioned in this way

01:09:17.100 when in fact they won't

01:09:18.640 so in saying that I'm not saying everything is good in Scotland

01:09:22.380 and I don't think it's going to get better

01:09:27.160 because I think the law is doing what it can

01:09:30.160 and it's still not enough 1.00

01:09:31.260 I think women have to have representation 1.00

01:09:34.420 in the courtroom representing their interests 1.00

01:09:39.100 The prosecutor represents the public interest. The defence counsel represents the person accused. I think the woman who is saying that she has been accused or that she has been subject to a sexual assault or any kind of assault, a domestic violence assault, although I don't like the term domestic violence.

01:10:01.180 But if any woman has been subject to that kind of thing, they should have representation in court to put forward their position in their side.

01:10:12.080 I'd just like to follow up on that point, because from where I am in France, I think there's a couple of key issues that have emerged from this, which apply also elsewhere in the world.

01:10:21.600 First of all, convictions for rape are rare in this country.

01:10:26.380 According to the New York Times, 94% of reported cases were dropped in 2020.

01:10:32.260 This was according to a report last year by the Public Policy Institute in this country.

01:10:39.200 So, you know, it shows that clearly there's a problem there for women reporting rape.

01:10:45.080 Secondly, the Me Too movement didn't take off in this country the way it did in the

01:10:49.760 English-speaking world, back in 2017 and 2018 when it started

01:10:54.620 to emerge, Catherine Deneuve, along with 99 other prominent

01:10:59.840 French women, wrote a tribune, as they say in French, 0.68

01:11:03.800 an open letter which was published in Le Monde saying, you know, 0.86

01:11:07.480 this Me Too movement has gone too far, it's very Anglo,

01:11:10.280 it's very puritanical and, you know, in France we're all 0.98

01:11:14.100 about the culture of seduction.

01:11:15.580 So I think this case has done something that Me Too has failed to do, and that is start conversations everywhere about how women are treated when it comes to any form of sexual interaction.

01:11:31.480 and i would also say in terms of this case what it has done for uh is shine a light on drug

01:11:42.000 facilitated sexual assault because again it's not enough is known about this i know the uk

01:11:48.360 has in fact been leading the charge i think they're talking is am i right claire and

01:11:53.860 criminalizing it or there was some discussion in scotland the common law would deal with spiking

01:12:00.960 because that would be an assault if you do something to someone to harm them in that way

01:12:06.340 you could certainly argue that would be an assault and also in our law we have that if people are

01:12:12.020 unable to give consent because of drink or drugs then consent is deemed not given in law so the

01:12:21.480 statute always deals with that the difficulty of course is that whilst the statute can say that

01:12:27.640 a jury is left to decide, well, was the person drunk enough? Could they consent? Could they not

01:12:34.340 consent? So it helps, but it doesn't remove the issue. But what it has done, I think, is

01:12:41.440 shone a light on the issue in terms of alerting people, healthcare workers, police officers,

01:12:48.200 anyone involved in the criminal justice system, that this clearly is a problem. It is something

01:12:54.000 that needs to be addressed and as a result I know in the French police there are now

01:12:58.720 discussions and in fact they've started I think some some mini training courses

01:13:04.080 for police officers to identify victims of drug facilitated sexual assault so in terms of what

01:13:11.700 comes out of this in a positive way I really hope that as a result particularly in this country which

01:13:17.980 badly needs this conversation to be had at all levels, that people are now thinking about the

01:13:25.000 whole issue of sexual violence and how it is an epidemic. Finally, I will just say this.

01:13:31.940 As someone, as well as hosting and producing a women's program, I'm also a news presenter.

01:13:38.920 The number of times in a bulletin where we talk about women being the victims of sexual violence

01:13:46.320 happens constantly and if anything again comes out of this story is global recognition that

01:13:54.320 this is not an epidemic it's a pandemic and its society needs to address this issue urgently

01:14:01.580 it's been made a million times worse by social media and the fact that we have failed in educating

01:14:09.180 boys and men about proper healthy sexual relationships it's it's a mess it's actually

01:14:17.220 a mess i was i went to an exhibition in the baltic art gallery in um newcastle the day before

01:14:23.180 yesterday and one of the things they had there was a really interesting retrospective of a

01:14:28.100 photographer and campaigner and activist called frankie raffles who um who lived in scotland and

01:14:34.860 actually was at St Andrews University and then worked in Edinburgh and various other places

01:14:39.040 and I hadn't realised that she was involved with the zero tolerance campaign that was launched when

01:14:45.640 I went to university in 1992 I think it was so I would have been 17 and it was an incredible thing

01:14:52.860 that I would like to see actually just replicated exactly as it was there were black backgrounds and 1.00

01:14:58.980 it was called zero tolerance and there was a big white zed in the middle and it was very hard

01:15:03.580 hitting photographs that she'd taken where it was just women and girls and the text was very

01:15:09.300 minimal underneath and it was things like one of the posters was and these were everywhere they

01:15:14.240 were in bus stops they were you know inside a building that it was really impactful one of the

01:15:18.920 pictures was two little girls just playing with toys on the carpet and it said words the effect

01:15:22.820 of underneath of by the time they're 18 one of these girls will have been sexually assaulted

01:15:26.840 you know there was another one saying that from the ages of nine to 93 women are sexually assaulted

01:15:31.520 we need to start putting that back out again instead of going like all sex is cool we need

01:15:37.520 to be like we're not talking about that we're talking about consent and how widespread the

01:15:42.200 issue is and how it must stop and how we won't tolerate it because it's things like the tate 0.96

01:15:47.920 brothers that the kind of bullshit that they've said online the fact that some men who are making 0.67

01:15:53.780 money out of that are using those things there is ultimately men making money from the structures 0.98

01:15:59.600 of things like only fans and the internet and porn sites and it's just horrifying and i'm just

01:16:04.960 going to circle back to why this is linked to our witch campaign and it's because once again it's 0.75

01:16:11.100 about women being the people that come off worse in a situation when things get tough it's women

01:16:17.580 that become the victims of things often you know we're going through a period of time in society

01:16:21.900 where we are scared about climate change about impending war about current conflicts about

01:16:28.600 potential food scarcity all those things and we know that from the past with the witches

01:16:32.700 when they were accused we know that the research with that supports that when you're going through 0.76

01:16:37.400 societal changes we look for victims and they're the ones that get accused and again it's women 0.86

01:16:43.220 it's overwhelmingly women because they don't have the power so we need to have our eyes absolutely 0.79

01:16:47.940 open about this as women and we need to keep talking and keep up the energy that was generated 0.99

01:16:52.300 during the pellico case so so yeah i don't know if you saw there was there was um a thing online

01:16:58.320 which was being retweeted and it was about a man musing about how hundreds of years ago when women

01:17:04.220 were able to consent to marriage when they was 14 there wasn't any trauma then so really these 1.00

01:17:10.460 things are um really just societal norms and i mean thankfully the backlash was you idiot of 0.97

01:17:19.100 course there was trauma then there are lots of men that do believe that that think we need to turn 0.98

01:17:23.880 to the good old days where women got married really young and they popped out babies and

01:17:28.480 they lived in some sort of you know paradise in the countryside we're going to start shouting 0.99

01:17:33.400 about trad wives in a minute annette sand and thinking if we went back to old-fashioned values 0.99

01:17:42.140 i.e women being even more subjugated than we are now men would be happy fuck off like that i'm 0.98

01:17:48.500 sorry i know that's quite rude i think the french will forgive it but i just think that we get 0.99

01:17:54.460 together we're seeing that already in afghanistan yeah and who gives a shit about that there's still

01:18:01.340 and the fact that that they've now i don't know whether you you've heard this their latest measure

01:18:06.960 is that anyone who has a window overlooking a building which where a woman can be seen

01:18:12.980 needs to brick up that or block out that window so basically they want women to live in the dark

01:18:18.440 just in case somebody sees them and what are we doing about that nothing we're doing nothing about

01:18:24.320 it exactly and i mean that's obviously about ending gender apartheid but the other thing i

01:18:29.820 would say if you put a white supremacist in the same room as a jihadist what is the thing that

01:18:35.520 they're going to immediately find in common, their views about women. And again, we are seeing now

01:18:44.980 a massive backlash towards women and women's rights. And we're now seeing the emergence of

01:18:52.120 authoritarian leaders and far right leaders. I mean, as I say, more red flags than all the

01:18:58.580 handmaid's gowns sewn together it um it's terrifying times but there are outliers there 0.96

01:19:07.400 are women like Giselle Pelico who take a stand and as a result of what she has done

01:19:14.140 has started a conversation in France has started a conversation worldwide and for me has

01:19:21.200 has really solidified as I said this this sort of idea that we must give women agency in these

01:19:30.520 sorts of proceedings and if that has to be rolled out to everybody who's who is a complainer in the

01:19:35.880 case fine fine if that's what it takes for it to for it to work that's great the the the phrase I'll

01:19:42.840 let you Annette say it the phrase that um is now synonymous with Giselle Pellico is one that I

01:19:50.140 think should be repeated constantly shame must change sides absolutely it is the most powerful

01:20:00.040 phrase she was talking about whether or not she was going to change her name and she said the

01:20:06.880 Pelko name is the name that I have given to my children and she said it's not for me to be

01:20:13.120 ashamed. It's not for me to be ashamed. And the open powerfulness of saying that and standing in

01:20:22.820 the face of the world is just absolutely breathtakingly brave. And I think she's an

01:20:32.260 amazing woman. And I think the other thing about it too is sending a message that this is not

01:20:37.520 something that happens in poorer communities or in the global south or you know somewhere far away

01:20:45.520 absolutely like like the zero tolerance campaign the zero tolerance campaign was very quick to see

01:20:52.400 um this isn't about class by the way because it was always shown you know of poorer surroundings

01:20:58.180 and domestic violence and i remember i said to zoe there was it struck me really um strongly the

01:21:05.160 picture that was taken of the woman sitting um on a rug as well beside a nice fire in a beautiful

01:21:12.200 home and seeing you know this person is also subject to domestic violence and it's it's you

01:21:18.640 know all women everywhere all the time is that the name of the movie it's close but we need that's

01:21:25.480 that's what we need to do is we need to keep up that energy and we need to keep talking about it

01:21:28.860 and not be bowed down by these belligerent voices on the internet the internet is just

01:21:34.180 it is just just an echo chamber you know it's it's things happen in real life and we need to

01:21:39.360 actually empower our girls and women to say no enough's enough right now Gisele Pellico couldn't

01:21:45.100 have done that but if we had stronger things happening in society he Dominique may not have

01:21:51.300 felt as empowered those other men may not have felt as empowered but I think we need to keep

01:21:56.020 very strong with that we need to be talking about it in schools we need to be making sure that the

01:22:00.660 police are absolutely up to speed on this because it's been shown that time and time again that

01:22:05.860 because they're very male dominant structures the police and medicine that they don't listen to

01:22:11.320 women that women are not listened to and we're going to have to keep banging on about that

01:22:15.460 until there's actual real change and again you need to be educating the men and boys at the same 0.94

01:22:21.040 time you know the onus can't always be on us as women to carry the fight it's not for us to wear

01:22:29.380 long skirts and cover our cover ourselves up all the time you know it's it's on men and women

01:22:33.900 and boys to know that there are boundaries like keep away you know anyway it's been an absolute

01:22:41.880 pleasure pleasure is the right word it's been it's been energizing to talk to you Annette

01:22:46.940 thanks so much for listening to this episode I hope you found it as interesting as we found it

01:22:51.700 to make it um before we go we just need to remind you to please keep getting in touch with us on our

01:22:57.880 socials obviously twitter is problematic we know a lot of people are moved away from there but we've

01:23:02.920 still got lots and lots of people that follow us on there so please do get in touch but we also use

01:23:07.820 instagram quite a lot we use facebook we're not on there as much but do try and persevere

01:23:12.600 um and if we're doing any events please come and say hello speaking of events claire what what

01:23:19.140 should we be saying to people oh well as you may know dear listeners our books coming out

01:23:26.360 in may of this year and also in america oh and october in america as well very exciting and

01:23:35.920 people are already getting in contact with with us asking about the book and asking whether or not

01:23:42.040 that we can get signed copies the answer to that is yes you can and we're getting that sorted with

01:23:47.960 publishers at the moment but they've asked to just to hang fire a wee bit um secondly um the

01:23:55.780 people have gotten contact with us asking whether or not we could come and do talks at their bookstore

01:24:00.380 which we are very well very happy to do we're very welcome to do just crowbarring our way into

01:24:07.240 people's bookstores whether or not they like it or not um so if you are a bookshop owner or if you

01:24:14.040 have a local bookshop that you would like us to come to please do let us know please do get in

01:24:19.360 contact we'll pass on your details to the publisher and the publisher will speak to the bookshop and

01:24:24.800 try and make that happen so we're going to be doing as many of the sort of talks as we possibly can

01:24:30.680 to promote the book and it's weekends yeah mostly because we're working because of claire's court

01:24:36.880 schedule and my teaching it needs to be pens really but we're really really excited we're

01:24:45.060 now getting physical copies of the book to have a look at and i cannot wait um to share that with

01:24:52.100 you we will put it on the socials when it arrives tiktok might be our first tiktok so we

01:24:57.000 we need to be in the same city maybe

01:25:00.260 it's true it's true that might not be our first tiktok then um so please do get in contact with

01:25:08.460 us if that is something that you want us to do and finally can i just say a personal uh a personal

01:25:14.900 vote of thanks we gave a shout out asking for anyone who knows of a sound engineer to get in

01:25:23.880 contact with us because we would like a sound engineer to help us now at the moment what's

01:25:28.500 happened is that Lola has been able to help us I got a lovely contact from a woman whose husband

01:25:37.700 runs a studio and I said to her she contacted us and said look I can help you and I said that's

01:25:46.100 very very kind thank you so much I'll get in contact with Zoe which I did immediately and said

01:25:51.180 you'll never guess someone said that they'll help us should we do this and she said yes

01:25:55.580 and then what happened was that my phone deleted the text message and I cannot get back in contact

01:26:03.500 with her so if you are wondering what happened that's what's happened and if you would like to

01:26:10.200 reach out again although I don't blame you if you wouldn't at this stage but if you'd like to reach

01:26:14.420 out again please do so so I can get in contact with you that would be very kind. Just in case

01:26:19.320 Lola gets too busy but she should be fine she should be fine but I was going to say as well

01:26:24.260 that you know that it's great to have Lola involved with it because it means that we've

01:26:28.240 got another young person who is you know interested and we know that there's lots of

01:26:33.720 younger people round about her age who are definitely interested in it which is really nice

01:26:37.880 so um find us on the socials get in touch we're looking forward to meeting more people as the

01:26:45.160 year goes on and we're actually out at events that'll be really nice so Claire is there anything

01:26:49.860 else you'd like to say at this juncture yeah i'd like to just say stay quarrelsome oh gosh yeah

01:26:57.000 stay damesome yeah be a quarrelsome dame be a quarrelsome dame yeah we really need to get some

01:27:04.420 necklaces made that say quarrelsome dame don't we really i need to add that to our merch if anybody's

01:27:10.100 got any hot tips for how we would go about doing that let us know yeah let us know and and i really

01:27:16.240 really promise to try not to immediately lose your email or text message by deleting it or

01:27:23.220 auto deleting it wow these things happen it's not badness like i said before i'm not sure it's not

01:27:31.440 badness always gets you off the hook but anyway we'll keep going with that until we're caught out

01:27:35.880 okay so that's been lovely to chat to you again claire and i'll see you next time for the next

01:27:41.600 episode of the Witches of Scotland

01:27:43.700 podcast

01:27:44.500 bye

01:27:45.940 if you'd like to know more about the Witches of Scotland 0.97

01:28:01.340 please subscribe wherever you get your

01:28:03.420 podcasts sign up for

01:28:05.420 our mailing list at

01:28:06.720 www.witchesofscotland.com

01:28:10.180 to keep updated

01:28:11.180 with the campaign. On that site, you'll be able to find how to link with us on Twitter,

01:28:16.680 Facebook and Instagram.

Witches of Scotland - January 25, 2025

WITCHES OF FRANCE - ANNETTE YOUNG on GISÈLE PELICOT

Episode Stats

Transcript