The details of Gisèle’s case are heartbreaking and complex. Dominique had been secretly drugging his wife and arranging for strangers to assault her, recruiting them from an online forum. Some of these men later claimed they believed the assaults were part of a consensual “role-play” organized by Dominique. But this raises some hard questions: how could these men have truly believed this was consensual? Were they willingly ignoring the obvious signs just to avoid taking responsibility?

These uncomfortable questions tap into something much bigger—society’s deeply flawed attitudes toward women, sex, and consent. The assumption that these encounters could be consensual points to a troubling mindset, one that too often pushes aside women’s voices and autonomy. Gisèle’s choice to go public challenges us to rethink how easily people assume consent and how dangerously this assumption can be abused.