After Pelicot: Confronting misogyny in Wales
Dr Shân Morgain
Last year Gisèle Pelicot became a world icon, a modern saint, an incredibly brave pioneer slicing open the murk of male misdeeds. She refused to hide her extraordinary suffering in anonymity. I wrote about her here on Nation Cymru when her enemy husband was convicted December 2025 ‘Gisele Pelicot asks why?’
I stressed that we in Wales could not stand back because the Pelicot case happened in another country. I called on the proud traditions of Cymru to act – and my call has been answered.
Pelicot – and others
Dominique Pelicot was convicted December 19, 2024 of drug sedating and raping his wife, recruiting many other men to rape her as well. She was unconscious of it all for many years, until police stumbled on videos her husband had made of it. Fifty other men were convicted along with her now ex-husband.
More cases are being exposed. In Northampton, England a man is currently facing a life sentence, after drug raping his girlfriend for 11 yeara, sometimes with another man, and making recordings.
The National Crime Agency (NCA) has uncovered international online networks which organise drug-enabled sexual abuse, where victims are sedated before being raped or sexually assaulted.
These networks operate in dozens of countries, across every continent.
The link with pornography is becoming clear. Both are one-way acts, controlling, using a passive person.
We now have a new acronym: DFSA (drug-facilitated rape and sexual assault).
Learning the lesson
It is too easily assumed that rape and abuse are just sexual events. They are not.
Rape and abuse hit their victims in their most private, sensitive places, not only physically but mentally. It acts as a ‘teaching’, brainwashing, a brutal message ground into flesh and mind alike.
“You are nothing but meat, you do not have the right to decide your life.”
Almost all victims are female (90% of rape, 82% abuse). Virtually all the criminals are men. The effects are major: flashbacks, nightmares, constant fear, inability to make decisions.
The younger it occurs the more deeply the lesson is learned: you are nothing but meat, you do not have the right to decide your life.. Survivors try through years of hard personal work, to rebuild their lives. Very young victims are less likely to survive well, and may live in fear and trained passivity, lifelong.
When trained into fear and passivity by sexual invasion, a person is likely to live in shame, use drugs, drink and distorted food, to self medicate, and fail at whatever they try to do. They are easily ‘groomed’ by new abusers to recruit them to prostitution and humiliation. They are instinctively recognised and seduced into domestic violence.
Cymru acts
The BBC has supported Jess Davies of Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, to act on her own youthful abuse to hunt down predators. She has worked with journalist Liam Connell, who had already investigated secret, online networks.
After her period of underage abuse Jess Davies went on to become a glamour model in underwear. It might seem like a way to regain control in a familiar body experience, but it also follows the learned lesson of being sexual meat.
Jess is uncompromising that women are ‘preyed upon’. She refuses the frequent response of ‘not all men’. No, not all men, but far too many. Her book No One Wants To See Your D*ck (2025) bravely explores ‘manosphere’ murkiness.
“These aren’t some weirdos in their mum’s basement who are chronically online, never leave their homes and don’t have a social life, no, these are people’s friends and people’s husbands.”
These are our brothers, fathers, grandfathers, our lovers, husbands, neighbours. Everywhere.
Consent
The whole idea of consent has exploded since the #metoo campaign reacted to Harvey Weinstein’s exposure in 2017. Two years later his kindred Jeffrey Epstein died in a prison cell, whether murdered or suicide is unclear. His victims are legion. The late Harrods owner, Mohamed Al-Fayed is subject to more than 400 allegations of misconduct towards women. But these are unusual. Most ‘bad apples’ are ordinary men.
Every profession, every workplace, is throwing up more and more accusations as women become braver, and find they are actually believed. But it is the home, the family, which is the most dangerous place of all, a profound betrayal of trust.
Most of the men in the Pelicot case did not think they had committed rape at all. Some were told by the husband it was a game the wife was playing. She later rejected that in court, pointing to the videos where she snored, obviously deeply drugged.
In Jess Davies’ BBC investigation men ‘felt if the victim never knew they were filmed without consent then there was no problem’. What the woman did not know could not be a wrong against her.
A similar argument might be used by those who castrated young drugged boys in history. That was done to preserve their high singing voices, or prepare them as security guards in a harem. Not knowing is the ultimate in destroyed consent.
Consent law is now moving towards explicit, expressed consent. Silence and mere submission is not enough.
Jess Davies ‘It’s a pandemic of misogyny’
A new word has been coined for these men: ‘spycammers’ . The ‘hypermasculine’ Andrew Tate who influences millions of men in destructive ways, is being extradited to face sexploitation charges in the UK. At last.
Gisèle Pelicot has found love and happiness. Her family are rebuilding trust among themselves, without the ‘submasculine’ man who betrayed them.
I would suggest that we change language and attitudes more. Heavy sentences, and convictions are all very well. But they play right into the aggressive, false heroics of horrible men.
I have written how masculinity as we train it through childhood and media, makes men lonely, amputated, isolated. Yet I know from happy experience of a beloved partner, a beautiful son, and a few good men friends, how men can be fully human.
Predator men are actually hurt inside, painfully lacking self respect so they frantically grab and grasp at female flesh to feel secure. The way to rescue their twisted minds is to help, not punish. Psychological treatment has achieved almost a third reduction in sexual reoffending. This is evidence based policy.
Hospitals
Shut them away in special hospitals, among soft fabrics, pastel colours, low lighting, fluffy toys, gentle music and lots of vigorous exercise. Many years of treatment to learn healthy respect. It will tell them – and others – deeply, thoroughly, they are not admired, but pitied.
They are to be encouraged to open up their inner, shrivelled selves, letting go of their masks, to become fully human. We must strip their false tough-guy pride.
I worked with men for some years as a therapist, albeit good men who wanted to grow and change out of lonely masculinity. I asked them to buy a fluffy toy and cuddle it constantly. They found it very tough indeed to do it, but it was successful, together with journals and meditations.
We would be cutting across rapists, abusers consent of course. Success would take a lot longer than if they were willing. Any prison sentence or community order, cuts their consent. They forfeit their free consent when they refuse it to their victims.
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HELP Anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse.
Wales, England Rape Crisis 0808 500 2222.
Scotland 0808 801 0302, Northern Ireland 0800 0246 991.
USA, Rainn 800-656-4673. Australia 1800Respect (1800 737 732).
More international helplines ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
MEDUSA dedicated to combat drug-facilitated sexual assault led by Germany and UK
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SOURCES
‘The bed you thought was safe, isn’t safe’ (22/07/26) More and more cases, their effects.
Northampton case, England ‘UK man admits 32 sexual offences against allegedly drugged or sleeping partner’ (14/07/26)
Jess Davies & Liam Connell’s investigations ‘I hunted the men’ (13/07/26)
BBC <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c621kprnd3jo>
Jess Davies’ documentary ‘Deepfake Porn: Could You Be Next?’ BBC 2022, was used get the UK government to criminalise sexually explicit deepfakes in the Online Safety Act
BBC <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9w8wkdpvllo>
Psychosocial treatment for sex offenders (6/02/25)
College of Policing <https://www.college.police.uk/research/crime-reduction-toolkit/psychosocial-treatment-sex-offenders>
Evidence submitted to Parliament
PDF <https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/134131/pdf/>
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Good article, but you seem to be confusing Jess Davies and Jess Phillips here. Maybe that’s an editor’s error.