Gisèle Pelicot reduced to tears watching video messages of support from women in France

‘Thank you for the courage you have given victims.’

‘Thank you for this battle on behalf of all girls, including mine.’

‘Bravo for your bravery and tenacity. As women, we are proud of you.’

Tears rolled down Gisele Pelicot’s face as she listened to the words of women from across France who shared how much she meant to them.

‘It touches me enormously because these are the faces I met during the trial. I saw them putting up posters, I saw their collages, I saw the banners,’ she said, watching the clips.

In a candid interview with BBC Newsnight, Gisele sat down and told her side of the story after becoming a feminist icon.

Gisele insisted that her trial be public, with her name published in the press and videos of her husband’s crimes exhibited in court, sparking widespread support, which saw women march in support of her during her court dates.

‘It’s not for us to have shame; it’s for them,’ she has declared defiantly, extending a hand out to fellow survivors as a means of encouraging them to not necessarily stand on a pedestal and become advocates, but simply to change their perceptions of their abuse.

Gisele’s ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, was found guilty in 2024 of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife for almost a decade, and inviting dozens of strangers to rape her.

Gisele, who is releasing her memoirs soon, remembers the moments she made three separate phone calls to each of her children, which she described as the hardest thing she has ever had to do.

‘I was well aware that for my children it was going to be immensely difficult,’ she told BBC Newsnight.

Speaking of her children’s reaction, she recalls the moment her daughter, Caroline, screamed in shock at her father’s actions toward her mother.

‘I heard my daughter scream. It was almost inhuman, that scream,’ she said.

She described her eldest child, David, as being in a state of shock, while Florian, the youngest, immediately checked in on his mother’s wellbeing asking her how she was.

Despite not speaking to her husband in court, Pelicot says she has one thing she still wants to do for closure.

She said: ‘I want to look him directly in the eye and ask him, ‘Why did you do that?’’

‘I don’t recognise myself in those photos. I said, ‘That’s not me.’ Then I put on my glasses, and there I discovered this lifeless woman with a man she didn’t know on her bed.

‘I think my brain disassociated.’

Until police knocked on her door four years ago, exposing the crimes, she lived a normal life as a wife, mother, and grandmother.

Under French law, the names of victims are normally kept out of the press, but she insisted on a public trial in an attempt to expose her ex and the 50 men that he is accused of inviting to rape her.

She allowed journalists to publish her full name and the court to exhibit explicit videos recorded by her husband showing men engaging in sexual intercourse with her while unconscious.

Gisele has said her decisions were in solidarity with all the other women who go unrecognised as victims of sexual crimes.

She recalled speaking to her ex-husband while on the stand in court, telling him: ‘I always tried to lead you towards the light, but you chose the depths of the human soul. You always have to choose, to decide which path to follow. There is the good and the bad.

‘As for me, I have always chosen to walk toward the good.’