Dominique Pelicot , 72 , drugged and raped his wife, Gisèle , for close to a decade , starting in 2011 .

He was caught after police nabbed him for taking up-skirt photos of women in public.

This week he was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Historian Sara McDougall was in Avignon this week to watch the verdict be declared.

The trial of Gisèle Pelicot was held in a medieval courtroom in France .

She was treated like a rock star and dominated proceedings with dignity and grace.

The trial helped change France 's rape law into something much broader, making it easier to prove.

There are more rape victims in France who are not exercising their right to remain anonymous.

There seems to be an uptick in people calling for help, making accusations, and the public reaction to this has changed as well.

Listening, it was so beautiful to hear how passionate and hopeful these young people were. I love to see it. Listening to hear them were.

Our end-of-year coverage gets underway today , with this typically brilliant piece by Lionel Shriver on whether wokeness really is in the rear-view mirror.

Here’s a roundup of some of my favourite spiked pieces of 2024 , in no particular order, and with some glaring, unforgivable, but totally unintentional, omissions.

The UK election might have been a snoozefest, but the US election was anything but.

We were thrilled to publish historian Robert Tombs ’s essay reflecting on the last Tory rout of 1906 .

We also published a lot of sharp cultural criticism this year .

Neil Davenport on the crucial importance of the pub, Hugo Timms on why smoking is becoming cool again, Ian Acheson on how terrorist Usman Khan slipped through the state’s net.

Christopher Snowdon on Lucy Letby trutherism, Patrick West on how politics was colonised by bores, Andrew Orlowski on why AI keeps getting dumber.

Michael Collins on the awfulness of Sadiq Khan .

David Harsianyany : The massacre of Oct. 7, 2023 , was one of the most traumatic events in modern Jewish history.

It's obvious now that it was a massive, perhaps existential, blunder by Iran as well as a stunning defeat for its allies both in the Middle East and Washington .

Israel 's success against Hamas and Hezbollah helped send Bashar Assad , a real-world genocidal dictator, into Russian exile.

Elon Musk is throwing his support behind Alternative for Germany (AfD) The far-right party is on track to see its strongest election performance since 2013 .

Polls show the party winning the second -highest amount of votes ahead of the February 2025 election, setting it up to be the largest opposition party in the Bundestag .

Liz Kendall announced this week that the government would not be paying the ' Waspi women' compensation.

The decision has been met with furious denunciations of betrayal and broken promises.

But the real villains here are the people who have used the Waspi ’s cause for their own political gain, such as the novelty Christmas singer, theme park attendee and occasional Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey .

Lots of people knew this very well, but they continued to indulge the WASPI campaign. The real scandal here is one of a political class that has led millions of women into false hope, knowing full well that the outcome they sought was never going to happen..

As we bid farewell to the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry, it’s clear that the prime takeout should be: let that not be an end to it.

Justice has yet to be served and justice has not yet been served.

ITV 's Mr Bates vs Post Office is now the most watched drama of 2024 , most watched anything bar sport.

Failure to bring big people to justice for ruining little people's lives may be defining story of first half of 21st century .

Failure to hold anyone at all responsible for the financial crisis of 2008 fuelled populist politics.

The Post Office scandal most certainly will be another one of them, unless a proper parade of executives find themselves in court.

Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar inaugurated the new U.S. Embassy in Mexico City on Tuesday, Dec. 17 .

The diplomatic headquarters, located in Miguel Hildago , is seven stories tall and reportedly cost more than $1 billion to construct.

The new man nominated as ambassador is Ron Johnson , who previously served in the US Army at the rank of colonel.

The UN agency entrusted with the protection and welfare of Palestine refugees for three-quarters of a century, Unrwa , which I lead, was always meant to be temporary.

The agency may be forced to halt its work in the occupied Palestinian territory next month if legislation passed by the Israeli parliament is implemented.

The tools and institutions needed to defend and reinforce our multilateral system and the rules-based order exist and are adequate we need only find the political courage to use them. - Philippe Lazzarini is commissioner-general of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East ( Unrwa ) - Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here..

GIJN has systematically kept track of investigative stories produced across Africa and curated, each month , the stories that we believe represent some of the best watchdog journalism on the continent.

This year , 50 stories from across English -speaking sub-Saharan Africa made it into our Africa newsletter.

Only eight of those stories will be part of our Africa editor’s picks.

Some of the stories have already been recognized at national, regional, or continental levels.

A team of 38 journalists spread across 11 countries dug into a leak of more than 890,000 internal records from the Eswatini Financial Intelligence Unit .

The investigation also revealed the inner workings of an African anti-money laundering unit as it pursued investigations into a wide range of suspicious activity.

Congo 's Misdiagnosis Epidemic broke down a complex public health issue with compelling storytelling.

AIIJ interviewed informers, counter-intelligence officers, “hitmen,” and mercenaries in various agencies and units who have carried out arrests and kidnaps.

The reporting provides insight into the perpetrators’ mindset and motivations.

The multi-part series traces the vast web of international money laundering networks originating in South Africa .

Since the July general election, Labour has lost 22 seats.

Starmer has the worst net satisfaction of any prime minister minus 34 in the history of Ipsos polling.

He is polling 12 points lower than the doomed Rishi Sunak was at the same point in his tenure.

Labour is now polling in the mid-20s, both Tories and Reform nipping at its heels.

A coherent economic agenda that speaks to the country’s woes could offer an alternative to Reform .

But Starmer 's allies are ideologically opposed to this, so instead they seem determined to compete with the populist right on migrant-bashing.

The left needs to present a clear coherent vision, and fight to set the political agenda.