Gisèle Pelicot publicly recounts harrowing discovery of her husband’s rape crimes

Survivor of Sexual Abuse Speaks Out in New Book About Landmark French Trial

Gisèle Pelicot’s world shattered on November 2, 2020, when a French police officer revealed an unimaginable horror: 53 men had entered her home over nearly a decade to rape her while she lay unconscious, drugged by her husband.

Now, in a newly published book titled “A Hymn to Life, Shame Has to Change Sides,” Pelicot is sharing her story of survival and courage in her own words. The memoir, excerpted Tuesday in French newspaper Le Monde, marks her first series of detailed interviews since the landmark trial that concluded in December 2024.

The case began to unravel when her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot, was questioned by police after being caught secretly filming up women’s skirts at a supermarket. Gisèle accompanied him to the station, completely unprepared for what would follow.

Police officer Laurent Perret carefully explained that the man she had considered a loving spouse had systematically drugged her food and drink over many years, inviting strangers to their home to sexually assault her unconscious body while he filmed the attacks.

“I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you,” the officer told her, before presenting evidence of her abuse.

When shown the first photograph of a woman dressed in a suspender belt being assaulted, Pelicot couldn’t recognize herself. “I didn’t recognize the individuals. Nor this woman. Her cheek was so flabby. Her mouth so limp. She was a rag doll,” she writes. “My brain stopped working in the office of Deputy Police Sergeant Perret.”

The trial, which concluded last year, resulted in guilty verdicts for all 51 defendants. Dominique Pelicot received the maximum 20-year prison sentence, while the other men received sentences ranging from three to 15 years. Only one man appealed his conviction, which resulted in his sentence being increased from nine to 10 years.

The case has become a watershed moment in France’s reckoning with sexual violence. Pelicot’s insistence that the trial be held in open court, rather than behind closed doors as is typical in sexual assault cases in France, transformed her into a global icon against sexual violence.

In her book, Pelicot explains this crucial decision: “Accepting the possibility of a closed-door trial would have protected my abusers and left me alone with them in court, hostage to their looks, their lies, their cowardice and their scorn. No one would know what they had done to me. Not a single journalist would be there to write their names next to their crimes. Above all, not a single woman could walk in and sit in the courtroom to feel less alone.”

The 73-year-old acknowledges that had she been younger, she might not have had the courage to demand an open trial. “I would have feared the stares,” she writes, describing “those damned stares a woman of my generation has always had to contend with, those damned stares that make you hesitate in the morning between trousers and a dress, that follow you or ignore you, flatter you and embarrass you.”

Her decision to make the proceedings public helped spark a national conversation about rape culture in France, bringing unprecedented attention to issues of consent, drugging, and sexual violence.

Despite the trauma she endured, Pelicot maintains a remarkably positive outlook. In an interview with Télérama magazine, she emphasized that her nearly 50-year marriage wasn’t entirely built on deception, and that her book “isn’t the story of a woman who has only known pain.”

“I am an unconditional optimist,” she told the magazine. “Despite what I experienced and the fact that I am 73 years old, I am very much alive and I allow myself to be happy. One can make friends, and even fall in love again.”

Her memoir and public statements come at a time when France is experiencing increased scrutiny of sexual crimes, with several high-profile cases drawing attention to drug-facilitated sexual assault. Pelicot’s extraordinary courage in demanding transparency has not only secured justice in her case but also created space for broader social change in how sexual violence is addressed in French society.