It’s a story of extraordinary courage: Over nine years, Gisèle Pelicot was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of other men he invited into their bedroom. But she refused to give into shame. She waived her right to anonymity and made the trial of her husband and the 50 men who joined him public.
At a time when the world is processing the fallout from the Epstein files, which we are also covering in today’s newsletter, Pelicot has become an inspiration to survivors of sexual abuse and a feminist icon. My colleague Lulu Garcia-Navarro spoke to her.
‘It is possible to overcome terrible trials’
By Lulu Garcia-Navarro
I didn’t know what to expect when I sat down with Gisèle Pelicot for almost three hours on a chilly Paris day in January.
Pelicot became a global symbol of empowerment after waiving her right to anonymity during France’s mass rape trial, where she publicly faced down her husband of 50 years and dozens of his co-conspirators in open court in 2024. Still, she remained something of an enigma.
While her story of being repeatedly drugged and raped made headlines and truly shocked the world, her few on-camera public statements on her way to and from the courthouse were dignified but brief, and she only recently agreed to sit for an interview.
Now, she’s ready to talk.
Pelicot has written a searing memoir, “A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides,” about her early life, her marriage and what it was like to learn about the ways she’d been violated for years. Those monstrous crimes raised awareness of drug-facilitated sexual assault and her long, complex recovery in the wake of those revelations.
Open, eloquent and emotional
I’ve interviewed many survivors of sexual and physical abuse. Often, and understandably, it’s difficult for people to talk about. Pelicot is also just a regular person — a former working mother who raised three children and who is now a retired grandmother — who found herself in extraordinary circumstances. I wondered how open she would be when talking to a journalist. I spent hours thinking about how to phrase things sensitively, and what to ask.
But from the moment we sat down, it was obvious that Pelicot had great inner strength and was ready to talk. She was open, eloquent and at times emotional. She told me that she wrote the book to be useful to others, “to show them that it is possible to overcome terrible trials. To show them that we have the resources within us to get through it.” In a word, Gisèle Pelicot is extraordinary.
Pelicot told me many awful stories. One of the most harrowing parts of our conversation was about the blackouts and unexplained memory loss she had experienced for years, before understanding that they were the result of being drugged.
At the time, she thought she was losing her mind, or dying. Another moment that I’ve had trouble getting out of my head was when she talked about the men who raped her but still have not been identified by the police, and how she spent many years fearing that she would run into them. The worst part: Because she had been so heavily sedated during the assaults, they would recognize her but she wouldn’t recognize them.
‘An explosion that blows everything away’
Still, Pelicot does not want to be seen as a victim. In the years between learning what had been done to her, and the trial, she divorced her husband and found love again. Her new partner, whom she brought to the interview, has helped her rebuild.
She told me that because she has no memory of what happened to her, it has perhaps been easier to move forward with her life. She mourns for the many women who do remember, but who don’t have the evidence to prove anything. She says she is “standing tall’ and unbroken despite all the men who wanted to see her break.
That is less true of her family. Images of her daughter Caroline were also found on her father Dominique Pelicot’s devices. Caroline stopped talking to her mother because she felt Gisèle wasn’t supportive enough of her concerns that she too might have been abused. They are now tentatively back in touch, but Gisèle Pelicot described what had happened to her family as an “explosion that blows everything away.”
After the interview ended, Pelicot wiped tears from her eyes and told me she was grateful for the chance to emotionally process what had happened to her. I got the sense of a woman who had endured the unthinkable, and who somehow had come through it, but there is still much she is trying to make sense of.
She told me that, eventually, she wants to visit her ex-husband in prison, to get the answer to what may be an unanswerable question: Why did he do what he did to her? She knows that meeting will be hard, but it’s something she needs to do.
“Maybe he’ll have some remorse when we’re face to face,” she told me. “I’m still holding on to that hope.”
Here are the takeaways. Read the full interview here.
Voici la version française. Aquí está la versión en español.
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Where is this?
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Here are today’s Spelling Bee, Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku. Find all our games here.
You’re done for today. See you tomorrow! — Katrin
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Katrin Bennhold is the host of The World, the flagship global newsletter of The New York Times.
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