Gisele Pelicot has revealed that her new boyfriend helped her find the strength to face her ex-husband and dozens of her rapists in court.
In her upcoming memoir, Ms Pelicot, 73, tells her story of survival and courage – and talks about how she waived anonymity in the December 2024 trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men who repeatedly raped her while she was unconscious.
Her abusers were all convicted, and her ex-husband was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while she became a global icon against sexual violence.
In Et la joie de vivre, which translates to A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, Ms Pelicot describes how Jean-Loup, the partner she met in the summer of 2023, became her pillar of strength as the trial neared.
She writes in the memoir how Jean-Loup printed the 400-page indictment her lawyers wanted her to read so she would not have to read it on a screen.
She also describes how, in reading all of the horrific details of what she endured, she became ready to face the courtroom, due to her confidence in her relationship with Jean-Loup, as well as her age.
‘I wasn’t afraid of my wrinkles, nor my body. I loved Jean-Loup, and he loved me. My happiness also played a part.’
In the book extracts, Ms Pelicot also says that accepting the possibility of a closed-door trial would have protected her abusers and left her alone with them in court, ‘hostage to their looks, their lies, their cowardice and their scorn’.
Gisele Pelicot says her new boyfriend gave her the strength to face her rapists in court in her upcoming memoir
The shocking trial saw Ms Pelicot become a global icon against sexual violence. Pictured: Ms Pelicot talks to journalists after the verdict in the trial of her rapists in December 2024
‘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,’ she explains. ‘Above all, not a single woman could walk in and sit in the courtroom to feel less alone.’
The 73-year-old adds that had she been twenty years younger, ‘I might not have dared to refuse a closed-door hearing.’
‘I would have feared the stares,’ she writes. ‘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. Those damned stares that are supposed to tell you who you are, what you’re worth, and then abandon you as you grow older.’
She says she also felt ‘nourished and warmed’ by ‘that crowd outside, swelling and escorting me every day’ near the court. ‘That crowd saved me,’ she says.
In her book, Ms Pelicot also talks about the day her world fell apart, in November 2020.
Her then-husband, Dominique, had been summoned by police for questioning after a supermarket security guard caught him secretly taking videos up women’s skirts.
Ms Pelicot accompanied him and was completely unprepared for the bombshell delivered by the officer, Laurent Perret.
Gradually, and with care, he explained how the man she regarded as a loving husband and whom she described as ‘a super guy’ had, in fact, made her the unwitting victim of his perversions.
Ms Pelicot says that her decision to waive her anonymity during the trial made her feel less alone
‘I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you,’ the officer said, words she recounts in the book.
The first showed a man raping a woman who had been lying on her side and dressed up in a suspender belt.
‘That’s you in this photo,’ the officer said.
He then showed her another photo, and another after that — drawn from a collection of images that Dominique took of his wife over the years when he regularly knocked her unconscious by lacing her food and drink with drugs, so strangers he invited to their home could assault her while he filmed.
Ms Pelicot couldn’t believe that the inert woman in the photos was her.
‘I didn’t recognise the individuals. Nor this woman. Her cheek was so flabby. Her mouth so limp. She was a rag doll,’ she writes in her book.
‘My brain stopped working in the office of Deputy Police Sergeant Perret.’
The shocking case and her courage in demanding that it be tried in open court spurred a national reckoning about the blight of rape culture. The harrowing trial ended in December 2024 with guilty verdicts for all 51 defendants.
Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison
Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men were convicted of rapes and sexual assaults over a period of nearly a decade. Another man was convicted of drugging and raping his own wife with Dominique Pelicot’s help.
Dominique Pelicot, found guilty on all charges, was given the maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison. The sentences ranged from three to 15 years imprisonment for the other convicted men. Only one of them subsequently appealed and saw his sentence for rape increased from nine to ten years’ imprisonment.
In an interview with Télérama magazine, Gisèle said her nearly 50-year marriage with Dominique Pelicot wasn’t all built on lies and that her book ‘isn’t the story of a woman who has only known pain’.
‘I am an unconditional optimist,’ she said. ‘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.’
