WARNING: This article includes details of intimate partner violence and sexual assault
The Sunday Magazine35:22Victim. Survivor. Icon. Gisèle Pelicot heard it all. But in her words? ‘An optimist’
Gisèle Pelicot understands that those who followed her ex-husband’s trial in September 2024, where he was convicted of drugging her, raping her and inviting other men to do the same while she was unconscious, might only see her through that lens.
She’s been called a victim. A survivor. A feminist icon.
But, despite “all the difficult chapters” as she puts it, what she calls herself is “an optimist.”
At 73, she has not lost her faith in men, love or the possibility of finding peace, she said in a recent Canadian broadcast exclusive interview with The Sunday Magazine host Piya Chattopadhyay.
“I’ve always believed in happiness,” she said in the interview, which has been translated from French to English. “And that’s essential, in my mind, because if there isn’t love, I can’t see why we would be here on Earth.”
Her memoir
It’s an echo of what she’s written in her book, A Hymn to Life: Shame has to Change Sides, which will be released on Tuesday.
“I know my story has fuelled disgust for men, but it has not done that for me,” she writes. “I still have faith in people. Once that was my greatest weakness, now it is my strength, my revenge.”
Almost six years ago, Pelicot’s life was upended when police in southeastern France showed her some of the photos Dominique Pelicot had kept to document the assaults that he orchestrated against her involving himself and at least 50 men beginning in 2011, according to evidence at trial.
Police could only identify some of the men in the roughly 20,000 files of photo and video evidence; 50 were convicted of participating in the sexual assaults after being recruited online by Dominique Pelicot to assault his wife while she was unable to consent.
He was sentenced to 20 years in prison — the maximum under French law; the other men received sentences ranging from three to 15 years.
Gisèle Pelicot was the victim at the centre of one of the most notorious rape trials in French history. Now, for the first time she is opening up about it all in her memoir A Hymn To Life, telling CBC’s Piya Chattopadhyay about ‘falling down into hell’ and building herself back up again.
Supporters around the world rallied for Pelicot after she waived her right to anonymity at the trial.
The images of the mother and grandmother outside the courthouse in Avignon, France, each day would underscore her quiet strength and dignity as she repeatedly rejected the narrative that survivors carry the shame of their perpetrators’ crimes.
“In the street, women tell me: ‘You’re an icon.’ I would say I’m more like a symbol or a landmark in these women’s lives, because the trial really gave them a voice,” she said in the interview. “But really, I’m an ordinary woman who refused that the trial be closed to the public.”
Her book, she says, is a way to continue that legacy, to rebuild her life and to help reconcile her memories of five decades of marriage and family life with what came after.
Her trauma, she says, was magnified by a sense of cognitive dissonance; having been unconscious during the assaults only added to the disconnect between her perception of reality and what her husband had done.
“He had been a sweet, kind man, shy; a good father, a good grandfather,” she said, noting she had never knowingly experienced any violence until police contacted her — something that made the revelation even harder for her to process.
“When I found out what he had done to me, it was like a bomb exploded in my life,” she said. “But I wanted to establish that he hadn’t been some monster his whole life. Well, ‘monster’ — I don’t like that word. They’re monstrous acts. He’s still a human being, despite what he did.”
Disintegration of a family
As the investigation continued and the trial began, Pelicot says her family fell apart, referring to herself and her three adult children. She filed for divorce while Dominique Pelicot was awaiting trial, saying she could no longer have any contact with him.
Two photos of her daughter, Caroline Darian, were recovered from Dominique Pelicot’s computer showing her in her bedroom in underwear, seemingly asleep or unconscious.
The explosive mass rape trial of Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men in Avignon, France, may have come to an end Dec. 19, but for his daughter, Caroline Darian, the story was nowhere near over. In an interview with The Sunday Magazine’s Piya Chattopadhyay, Darian describes how her family is dealing with the aftermath. She also says she’s proud of her mom, who is now seen as a feminist hero.
While he was convicted of sharing intimate images of his daughter without her permission, Darian believes the abuse went further and has brought charges against her father. (He denied the allegations when Darian accused him of it in the courtroom during his trial for the crimes against her mother.)
Pelicot says she is furious on behalf of her daughter and that she hopes she gets the answers she’s seeking.
“Today, each of us is trying to heal as best we can, but we each felt it differently and had different kinds of suffering,” she said. “I mean, for the kids, this was their dad … and that all crashed down.”
They all coped differently, she says, noting that it helped her to hold on to family photos documenting moments in which they all appeared to be happy.
“You can’t go back and relive your life,” she said. “I needed to believe that those 50 years hadn’t been a lie so that I could keep on living … Everyone has to find their own strategy to cope with these memories.”
In a Canadian broadcast exclusive interview, the 73-year-old told Piya Chattopadhyay, host of CBC Radio’s The Sunday Magazine, about her decision to choose happiness despite all she has been through.
Finding new love
In writing her book, Pelicot says she has accepted that she might never fully comprehend her husband’s motivations or connect the disparate parts of her life. But in examining the different pieces, she says she was left with “a message of hope” and the belief that she — and other women — can rebuild.
Part of that meant allowing herself to once again trust in love, though she says that was something she wasn’t expecting to find.
Still, she did. Her partner supported her during the trial and continues to do so.
“I’m not looking back, I’m looking forward. I allow myself to be happy today,” she said. “I’ll always be there for women, if they need me, to give them strength, to encourage them to go all the way if they’re going to press charges … But I also aspire to a peaceful life and to take advantage of the years I have left.”
If you’re in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 911. For support in your area, you can look for crisis lines and local services via the Ending Sexual Violence Association of Canada database.
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