\n<\/p>\n
A<\/span>t Gis\u00e8le Pelicot\u2019s new home on \u00cele de R\u00e9 off France\u2019s Atlantic coast, she likes to take bracing walks along the beach in all weathers, play classical music loud, eat nice chocolate and, as a gift to each new morning, always set the table for breakfast the night before. \u201cIt\u2019s my way of putting myself in a good mood when I wake up: the cups are out already, I just need to put the kettle on,\u201d <\/em>she says.<\/p>\n But one of her most treasured possessions is a box of letters she keeps on her desk. The envelopes from across the world \u2013 some sent on a prayer, addressed only with her name and the village in Provence where she once lived \u2013 piled up at the courthouse in Avignon in southern France in late 2024, when she became famous worldwide as a symbol of courage for waiving her right to anonymity in the trial of her ex-husband and dozens of men he had invited to rape her while she was drugged unconscious.<\/p>\n For almost a decade, Dominique Pelicot, to whom she was married for 50 years, had crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her mashed potato, coffee or ice-cream. In an online chatroom called \u201cWithout her knowledge\u201d, he had invited dozens of men to rape her in her own bed at the yellow house with blue shutters in Mazan in south-east France, where the couple had retired. \u201cI\u2019m looking for a pervert accomplice to abuse my wife who\u2019s been put to sleep,\u201d was one of his lines. The trial, which Gis\u00e8le insisted must be held in public, shocked the world, raised awareness of drug-facilitated abuse \u2013which is termed \u201cchemical submission\u201d in France \u2013 and brought an outpouring of recognition from women, from Spain to the US, teenagers to 80-year-olds, all of whom wrote to her with their own stories.<\/p>\n \u201cI have all the letters in a beautiful box,\u201d says Pelicot, 73, at the office of her literary agent in Paris\u2019s Left Bank.<\/p>\n She arrives with her new partner, Jean-Loup, a retired Air France steward. They are smiling and clearly happy. She never expected to fall in love again, she says. But in the four years between the \u201cdevastation\u201d of being informed by police in 2020 that her ex-husband \u2013 who had been caught upskirting in a local supermarket on 12 September that year \u2013 had also raped her while she was sedated, and the trial in 2024, she had sought refuge in solitude on the west coast of France. Gis\u00e8le had arrived with just two suitcases and the family bulldog, Lanc\u00f4me, in a state of shock and desolation. Slowly, while out walking, she made new friends. One of them introduced her to Jean-Loup.<\/p>\n double quotation markYou can love again, you can have several lives in one<\/p>\n \u201cNeither of us had ever thought we\u2019d fall in love again because Jean-Loup lived for 30 years with his wife who then sadly passed away from a neurological illness,\u201d she says. \u201cHe was her carer until the end. He\u2019s a very beautiful person. We met and fell in love. We couldn\u2019t have foreseen that. And we\u2019re really happy today. It has changed our lives. So you see, hope is allowed. Even for women who are not necessarily victims of violence, but who can find themselves widowed or alone, divorced. You can love again, you can have several lives in one. That\u2019s my case and I think it\u2019s the case for many women, too.\u201d<\/p>\n She would sit down with Jean-Loup, each night of the trial, in the house they had rented near Avignon, and they would read the letters that were sent to her. \u201cIt was a ritual \u2026 we\u2019d use a paper knife to open them graciously, out of respect for the writers. And each time, on reading them, tears would flow, because there was a lot of suffering. I think there are some that I still haven\u2019t opened, because there was so much suffering and so many tears in them. But of course I will read them all and I\u2019ll keep them for ever. And maybe, when I depart this earthly world, I\u2019ll pass them on, I\u2019ll entrust them to my grandchildren. And maybe one day they will also be read in schools. I hope that by then, we\u2019ll all have stopped this chemical submission and all sexual violence. But I think there is still a long way to go.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>A court sketch from 19 December 2024, showing Dominique Pelicot on the day of his guilty verdict and sentencing to 20 years in prison<\/span> Photograph: Beno\u00eet Peyrucq\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Gis\u00e8le, a former logistics manager at the state electricity company and a grandmother of seven, is now beginning an international book tour after the publication of her memoir, A Hymn to Life. It\u2019s a book about hope, she says. It was an exercise in \u201cintrospection\u201d for her to examine her difficult, grief-filled childhood, her \u201clove at first sight\u201d for Dominique (whom she now refers to only as Mr Pelicot), a long-haired 19-year-old wearing a striped Breton top and driving a 2CV, and their subsequent life together. It\u2019s an examination of the \u201cjoie de vivre\u201d she says she inherited from the women in her family who overcame tragedy, which gave her the determination to face the trial.<\/p>\n Born in a garrison town in west Germany in 1952, where her soldier father was posted, Gis\u00e8le describes a moment when she was four when her mother had slipped on ice. In the doctor\u2019s office, Gis\u00e8le spotted a scar under her mother\u2019s hair \u2013 a radiotherapy burn, she realised many years later. Nobody had told her about her mother\u2019s brain tumour \u2013 it was never discussed. Her mother just kept smiling, never wearing her pain on the outside, something Gis\u00e8le says she also learned to do very young.<\/p>\n When Gis\u00e8le was nine, her mother died at home in the French countryside in Indre, in the Centre-Val de Loire, where they were living. She remembers trying to wake her. \u201cFor me, she was sleeping. But when I saw my father close her eyes, and start crying, he was really devastated by grief.\u201d She and her brother weren\u2019t taken to the funeral but went to the grave a few days later when it was snowing. \u201cI thought: \u2018She can\u2019t be OK here, she must be cold,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/p>\n Her father remarried, a stepmother who Gis\u00e8le says was verbally abusive and rejected her. But aged 19, on a visit back to her mother\u2019s village, Gis\u00e8le met and fell in love with a local electrician: Dominique. He was shy and sweet, another wounded soul, she felt. His family was troubled, harbouring secrets, sexual abuse, violence. She didn\u2019t know the full extent of that then, but she felt they would save each other, make a break, be happy and start a family.<\/p>\n Gis\u00e8le had long struggled with sleep, after the death of her mother and later her father and brother, who all died young. \u201cI couldn\u2019t sleep in the dark, I needed the light on,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt it was because I associated sleep with death.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Being interviewed on BBC Newsnight.<\/span> Photograph: BBC<\/p>\n Today, after being drugged so many times, in a way that court medical experts said could have easily killed her, she says she sleeps well and is at peace with death. \u201cI know it\u2019s inevitable. All of us will face it one day.\u201d<\/p>\n For almost 10 years, from around 2011, Gis\u00e8le experienced what she thought were serious neurological issues, including memory lapses she feared were a brain tumour like her mother\u2019s, or an onset of Alzheimer\u2019s, as well as gynaecological problems. She was having black-outs and memory lapses, forgetting what she\u2019d done the day before, forgetting she had been to the hairdresser even if she could see in the mirror that she had had a cut and colour, afraid to drive or that she might miss her stop on the train.<\/p>\n She didn\u2019t know she was being drugged and raped. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know that could exist,\u201d she says. Crucially, neither did the many neurologists and gynaecologists whom she consulted, always accompanied by her supportive husband. One doctor wrote it off as anxiety.<\/p>\n But on a regular basis, her husband was putting medication in her food and drink that sedated her so heavily that it was as if she was on an operating table. \u201cIt was really a kind of general anaesthetic,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd all done with drugs you could have to hand in a medicine cabinet at home.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markI didn\u2019t wake up wearing something else, thinking: \u2018Hang on, I wasn\u2019t like this last night.\u2019 It was all calculated<\/p>\n His concoction of prescription drugs, honed with online advice from a man who had worked as a nurse, included muscle relaxants, which allowed her limp body to be abused and for Dominique to dress her in underwear he had chosen.<\/p>\n \u201cI feel the cold, so I always wear pyjamas in bed,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd he managed to undress me, re-dress me as he wanted, and put my pyjamas back on afterwards. Because when I woke up the next morning, I was in my pyjamas. I didn\u2019t wake up wearing something else, thinking: \u2018Hang on, I wasn\u2019t like this last night.\u2019 It was all calculated.\u201d<\/p>\n At the time, Gis\u00e8le and Dominique Pelicot were living the retirement they had always dreamed of: a house in Provence with a pool, board games on the patio, and visits from their children and grandchildren. Dominique, she says, \u201cwas loved by everyone, his children, his friends, his family. There was nothing to trouble the perfect picture. That\u2019s what is so terrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n Looking back now, she says there were some strange moments. She remembers him pouring a cocktail he had made for her down the sink when she said it tasted odd. Or another time, \u201cwhen I found bleach inexplicably on new trousers and, I don\u2019t know why, but I said to him: \u2018You\u2019re not drugging me by any chance are you?\u2019 And he started crying, and I was so destabilised by that. I thought: \u2018What have I just said to him?\u2019 And it was me who apologised. Like many victims, you know, I said to myself it was impossible that he could be doing any harm to me. I took it on myself.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Gis\u00e8le Pelicot followed by her lawyer St\u00e9phane Babonneau, right, is congratulated by women outside the Avignon courthouse after the prosecution concluded its case in November 2024.<\/span> Photograph: Christophe Simon\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n She does not regret insisting that the trial of her husband and 50 other men be held in public, when normally in France a rape trial can take place behind closed doors. Today she feels it was her life\u2019s \u201cmission\u201d to expose not just the crimes, but the justice system\u2019s treatment of rape survivors. That every man on trial was found guilty of rape, attempted rape or sexual assault was a \u201cvictory\u201d she says.<\/p>\n The most painful moment for her was having to view the \u201cunbearable\u201d videos that Dominique had carefully saved in a file called \u201cAbuse\u201d. \u201cWhen you see that body, that rag doll, inanimate, treated as it is being treated \u2026\u201d she begins. \u201cI put myself at a distance from that sedated woman, who isn\u2019t really me. That woman who is in that bed with all those men, it\u2019s not at all me. I think that helped me. Not because I was in denial, but it was to protect myself.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markThey were so casual, it was as if they were there for snatching a handbag. I think they hadn\u2019t understood the scale of their crimes<\/p>\n In the courtroom, she had to face the accused, many sitting very close to her, aged from their 20s to their 60s at the time of the abuse, including a soldier, a journalist, lorry drivers and a nurse, some high-fiving each other outside court and laughing and joking.<\/p>\n Dominique told the court \u201cI am a rapist,\u201d but the majority of the other men denied the charges, saying her husband had said it was OK, or that they thought it was a game.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were so casual, it was as if they were there for snatching a handbag,\u201d she says. \u201cI think they hadn\u2019t understood the scale of their crimes. That\u2019s when you realised this was all about the triviality of rape. They looked me up and down as if to say: \u2018Why is she troubling us with all of this?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Defendants in the Avignon courtroom during the final week of their trial with Dominique Pelicot.<\/span> Photograph: ZZIIGG\/Reuters<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the trial of cowardice and denial,\u201d she says. \u201cMy decision to make it public lifted the veil on the evils in society, because our society fosters denial. And we\u2019re still seeing it today through what\u2019s emerging in the Jeffrey Epstein case \u2026 Everybody shut their eyes.\u201d<\/p>\n For her, this culture of denial means \u201chanding all the strength and power to these types of men\u201d.<\/p>\n She was struck, too, by the testimony of some men\u2019s wives, girlfriends or female friends who attended court to say their loved ones couldn\u2019t possibly have raped anyone. And the three former police officers who appeared as character witnesses for one of the guilty men, who once worked as a karate coach for the police. \u201cThey said he had a deep respect for women. I said he had a funny way of respecting women. It says a lot about our macho and patriarchal society, that image of these former police officers, public figures, coming as character witnesses.\u201d<\/p>\n The applause of women who began gathering every day at the courthouse mattered greatly to her. \u201cIt carried me,\u201d she says. \u201cI felt less alone. Without them, maybe I wouldn\u2019t have had the strength.\u201d<\/p>\n The shame survivors feel, she says, must change sides, because it is \u201ca double sentence, a suffering we inflict on ourselves\u201d. But there is also \u201can extreme loneliness\u201d in being a survivor. When we meet, she is wearing the scarf sent to her during the trial by an Australian organisation working to raise awareness of sexual assaults on older women. \u201cIt\u2019s a nod to them, to show I\u2019m still connected to them,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n <\/span>Gis\u00e8le Pelicot with her daughter Caroline Darian and one of her sons at the courthouse during the trial in September 2024.<\/span> Photograph: Christophe Simon\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n One of the hardest aspects of the case has been the impact on her children and grandchildren. At the trial, Dominique was also found guilty of secretly taking indecent images of their adult daughter, Caroline, and the wives of his two sons.<\/p>\n Caroline, 46, who was also photographed asleep, has now filed a legal complaint accusing her father of drugging and raping or sexually abusing her when she was in her 30s, which he has denied. The relationship between Caroline and Gis\u00e8le was strained for a time but Gisele says it has grown closer again. \u201cCaroline feels certain her father sedated her and raped her,\u201d she says. \u201cUnfortunately, that can\u2019t be ruled out. She\u2019s in great suffering and I understand and hear her.\u201d<\/p>\n double quotation markI need answers. Why did you betray us like this? Why did you do so much harm to us? Why? I don\u2019t have answers<\/p>\n For Caroline, not having clear proof is a \u201cnever-ending hell\u201d, Gis\u00e8le says. \u201cIt\u2019s wrong to think this type of tragedy brings a family together. It blew everything apart. And each of us is trying to rebuild today in their own way.\u201d<\/p>\n Gis\u00e8le says she will visit Dominique in prison, probably later this year, to talk to him face to face one last time. \u201cI need answers,\u201d she says. \u201cWhy did you betray us like this? Why did you do so much harm to us? Why? I don\u2019t have answers. I\u2019ve tried to understand. I\u2019ve thought about whether it was connected to rapes that he may have suffered himself when he was young, that he was a ticking timebomb in some way, because he never got psychiatric help. But he nonetheless chose the depths of the human soul. He made that choice.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span>Activists outside the Avignon courthouse on 19 December 2024, the day of the verdicts and sentencing.<\/span> Photograph: Coust Laurent\/ABACA\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n Questions also still remain about Dominique\u2019s activities in the 1990s. He has admitted to the attempted rape of a young estate agent outside Paris in 1999, but has denied the rape and murder of another estate agent in Paris in 1991, which police continue to investigate. Gis\u00e8le, who has helped police with investigations, said she doesn\u2019t have any knowledge. She remembers him coming home twice in tears in the 1990s but doesn\u2019t remember the dates. \u201cI never saw any blood stains on Mr Pelicot. I never saw he\u2019d been scratched,\u201d she says. She hopes the two families of those women can get closure.<\/p>\n In her own case, there is still the chilling fact that the police were unable to identify all the men filmed raping her. \u201cThere are around 20, maybe more, walking free,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd I do wonder whether one day they will be caught doing it again. It\u2019s terrifying to think they could keep on doing this, as Dominique Pelicot copycats. Because today you can see there are still similar cases happening, and it\u2019s universal, it\u2019s not just in France.\u201d<\/p>\n French society has been changed by the trial. It has opened up crucial public discussion on drug-assisted rape and politicians pushed to have a clear reference to consent added to the rape law.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough it\u2019s good to change laws, I think above all you have to change mentalities,\u201d Gis\u00e8le says. Sexual offences by drugging are about the attacker \u201cfeeling all powerful \u2026 There has to be a collective awakening. I think this case has started that, but there is still much further to go. It\u2019s about education \u2013 respect and kindness towards others. It\u2019s that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n Men as well as women regularly approach her in the street to give thanks and support, she says. \u201cMen, too, were totally sickened to see the behaviour of the accused.\u201d<\/p>\n In the future, she would like to speak to law students in universities, who may go on to be defence lawyers, on how to treat rape victims. She says her own trial was \u201clike being in a pit with the lions\u201d, where some defence lawyers \u201csought to humiliate me, say I was complicit, I was consenting, or I was suspect\u201d. She was asked about her sex life, if she drank, if she was an exhibitionist, if she locked the door when she went to the toilet.<\/p>\n <\/span>\u2018In a way I was prepared for sadness and tragedy. But now I hope that\u2019s over\u2019 \u2026 Gis\u00e8le Pelicot in Paris this month.<\/span> Photograph: Joel Saget\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n The trial also showed that there is no such thing as a minor sexual offence. Ten years before Dominique\u2019s arrest in 2020, he had been caught taking photographs up women\u2019s skirts in the Paris area but got away with a \u20ac100 fine and Gis\u00e8le was never told. There was a feeling then, she says, that upskirting \u201cwasn\u2019t so bad\u201d. Stopping him then could have saved her a decade of abuse.<\/p>\n Dominique was arrested in 2020 thanks to the young security guard at a supermarket in Carpentras who had caught him upskirting again. She has since been to meet him. \u201cWe fell into a hug and I thanked him because if he hadn\u2019t seen what Mr Pelicot was doing in that supermarket \u2013 and if the local police officer, Laurent Perret, hadn\u2019t persevered in searching his phone and computer, I think Mr Pelicot would have been missed, he would have continued. And I\u2019m not sure I would be sitting here in front of you today.\u201d<\/p>\n Today, she says she is doing well. Since Dominique\u2019s arrest, she no longer has memory problems, she has regained weight, her hair-loss has stopped. The rapes infected her with several sexually transmitted diseases which doctors have treated and are being monitored. \u201cI think I\u2019m doing well. I\u2019m a survivor, I miraculously survived,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n One day when leaving court, she saw a young woman of 25 weeping uncontrollably, having, potentially, watched the video evidence. Gis\u00e8le asked her lawyers if she could go to comfort her. \u201cI wiped away her tears with my hands and said to her that I was OK, and that I needed her to be OK too,\u201d she says. \u201cIf she cried, I would collapse in tears, too, and I needed to stay strong.\u201d<\/p>\n She says: \u201cAs a child I understood I had to grow up faster than other children and I had to protect my father and my brother because they were devastated by grief at my mother dying. It\u2019s not that I didn\u2019t also carry that grief, but I kept it to myself and I built myself up as a little tin soldier of joy, moving forward step by step each day. And I think that\u2019s what forged my personality.\u201d Maybe, she says, \u201cthat\u2019s also why I could accept what happened to me. Because in a way I was prepared for sadness and tragedy. But now I hope that\u2019s over, I\u2019ve had my dose of it. And now I can allow myself to be happy for the years I have left to live.\u201d<\/p>\n A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides by Gis\u00e8le Pelicot, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver, is published by Bodley Head (\u00a322). To support the Guardian buy a copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At Gis\u00e8le Pelicot\u2019s new home on \u00cele de R\u00e9 off France\u2019s Atlantic coast, she likes to take bracing walks along the beach in all weathers, play classical music loud, eat nice chocolate and, as a gift to each new morning, always set the table for breakfast the night before. \u201cIt\u2019s my way of putting myself<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[7510,23219,3821,3934,3822,358,2939],"class_list":{"0":"post-44917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-crime-justice","8":"tag-courage","9":"tag-exhusband","10":"tag-gisele","11":"tag-loved","12":"tag-pelicot","13":"tag-rape","14":"tag-terrifying"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}