Gisèle Pelicot vs. a pack of rapists: 50 strangers and my former husband

In 2020, Gisèle Pelicot discovered that her then-husband, Dominique, had been secretly drugging her and raping her for years — and had invited strangers into their home in Mazan, France, to do the same. In total, 51 men were eventually convicted of rape and assault. In excerpts from her new autobiography, A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, Gisèle Pelicot describes how she discovered the horrific abuse, and how she decided to use the trial to force a sweeping public reckoning over sexual assault.

Warning: This excerpt contains graphic material that may disturb some readers.

CHAPTER ONE

I always set the table for breakfast the night before. I put out coffee cups, plates, cutlery, napkins, pots of honey and jam. Almost as a way of reaching across the hours of darkness that I fear, of proclaiming the harmony of the day to come. Then all there is to do in the morning is get out the butter, put on the kettle, and wait for the smell of coffee and toast to fill the air. All will be well.

That evening, as usual, I got everything ready. Even Dominique’s clothes. Let’s call him Dominique . I never used to call him that, I preferred affectionate nicknames — Doumé, Mino — but afterwards I didn’t know what to call him any more. I called him Monsieur. Monsieur Pelicot. Now that it is time to tell our story, I have decided to use his first name. I put out a pair of bottle-green corduroy trousers and a pink Lacoste polo shirt the children had given him.

We had to be at the police station the following morning; the appointment was at 9.30. After we woke up, we drank our coffee and listened to the news on RTL. The global COVID pandemic had picked up with a vengeance and another lockdown was in force. I looked up at the sky through the kitchen window facing me. It was going to be a lovely day, so I suggested a long walk after lunch as a way of defying the government’s restrictions, and as an antidote to the morning’s summons.

Dominique sat opposite me and said nothing. I reminded him it was November 2nd; my brother, Michel, would have been sixty-nine today. He sighed and said he didn’t like November, it was never a good month, no doubt an allusion to all the bills and notices of unpaid invoices that were about to come in. My ghosts and our money problems hung there between us in the kitchen for a moment. But we had always lived with them. And in a way, they had brought us closer. Dominique went to take a shower while I cleared the table. As we were about to leave, he pulled on a jacket that did not go at all with the outfit I had put together for him. I told him so, and he shrugged. We took my car. He drove us to the Carpentras police station.

Two months earlier, I had been staying with our daughter, Caroline, and her husband, Pierre, outside Paris, looking after my grandson until school started, and we had gone to spend the weekend at their holiday home on the Ile de Ré, off the Atlantic coast of France. That’s where I was when Dominique called me sounding unusually agitated. He stammered something about having lost his mobile, he needed a code to activate the new one he had just bought to replace it, he’d had it sent to my number. I gave him the code, but everything about this usually methodical and organised man seemed suddenly in disarray.

When he came to pick me up at the station a few days later he looked gaunt. We got home and he burst into tears. He said he couldn’t bear to lose me. I thought immediately of my father’s grief when my mother died. Dominique sat beside me, shaking with sobs, and I was unable to console him. I feared he might be ill, that his cancer might have returned to take him away for good.

When Dominique finally confessed to me that the previous week he had done something foolish at the Carpentras branch of the Leclerc supermarket — he’d been caught by a security guard filming under three women’s skirts, ended up at the police station and had his phone and computer seized — I was upset but I was also, in a way, almost relieved. It was terrible to think of my husband stalking these women, unbearable to imagine him as an offender, but it could have been so much worse. This was not irreversible. My fears were measured on a different scale: only death really frightened me.

So I told him that we would keep the incident between us; I wouldn’t tell the children, so as not to hurt them. And I wasn’t about to give up on him, but he absolutely had to apologise to the women he had filmed, and see a therapist. There wouldn’t be a next time, because if there was, I would leave. ‘I promise you,’ he said, ‘it won’t happen again.’ I would never be able to forget what he had done. It was a warning sign – but a warning of what? I had no idea. I just wanted our life to go back to normal. Life resumed in our little yellow house with blue shutters, the backdrop to our life in retirement in the South of France. The pool cover was on. The oleanders had finished blooming. Autumn was drawing near.

In mid-October I had gone up to Paris, this time to look after the children of my son David, who was due to undergo minor surgery. I was always going back and forth whenever I was needed to look after one or another set of grandchildren. The school-holiday schedule became my own. I rushed up to Paris any time there was a problem too. I was Maminou, the ­travelling grandma. I wasn’t afraid of getting old; I knew it was a privilege. Obviously when I was at David’s I spent most of the time with my granddaughters. Every morning, Charlize stubbornly refused to wear anything but a tracksuit. Clémence, her twin sister, was always changing outfits and had a penchant for princess dresses. They were nine years old, the age I was when I lost my mother.

I didn’t hear the phone ring that morning. I was sitting at the tennis courts. Clémence and I were watching Charlize as she ran after the ball. Her forehand had improved. I saw I had missed a call. Unknown number. I called back a little later. ‘Bonjour, were you trying to reach me?’ The man introduced himself: ‘This is Deputy Sergeant Perret from the Carpentras police. Are you aware that we interviewed your husband a few weeks ago? Do you have any idea what this is about?’ Yes, I said, my husband had told me everything. My answer resounded inside me like a quiet victory: transparency and trust were at the heart of our long marriage. And, I added, I had lived with this man for fifty years and he had never yet let me down.

‘When will you be back?’

‘On October 21st. I can come and see you straight away.’

‘No, no. We have too much work to do. Come with your husband on November 2nd.’

And so November 2nd arrived. Dominique had no reason to sob like Papa had when Maman died. ‘Don’t worry, it’s only a formality,’ I said to Dominique as we arrived at the police station, a low, unassuming, modern building, yellow like our house, the colour of Provence. We walked in, each masked up with one of those pale-blue rectangles that now covered every mouth on the planet. We had just reported to the reception desk when a man with a crew cut leaned over the balustrade on the first floor of the police station. It was Deputy Sergeant Perret.

‘I’ll see Monsieur Pelicot first, then Madame afterwards,’ he called down. Dominique walked up the staircase in his ill-matching jacket without looking back. A short while later the police officer reappeared and motioned for me to follow him. I went briskly up the stairs, assuming that I would find Dominique in Perret’s office. He wasn’t there. The police officer indicated the chair opposite him, far enough away from his desk that I could take off my mask. I immediately apologised profusely for what my husband had done. The man across from me was tall and solidly built, with a strong face above his wide shoulders. He seemed to embody authority, and yet there was something gentle and cautious in the way he talked to me. He asked me to confirm my identity and the date and place of my birth: December 7th 1952 in Villingen, in Germany. Maiden name: Guillou. Parents’ names: Yves Guillou and Jeanne Prot. He asked me how Dominique and I first met, and I told him it was at my mother’s sister’s house in July 1971. It was, I added, a genuine case of love at first sight. He wanted to know how I would describe my husband’s character.

‘He’s kind, attentive. He’s a lovely guy. That’s why we’re still together.’ He asked if we liked to entertain. I replied that we often had friends over. He asked me to describe a typical evening. I said we didn’t really have a routine, we weren’t that old yet. He asked me what time I went to bed, whether it was at the same time as my husband, whether I took a nap in the afternoon. I was a little taken aback by his questions.

‘Are you into swinging?’

I didn’t understand any more. I heard myself replying no, never, how ghastly, I heard myself spluttering that swinging was not something I would ever consider. That I couldn’t imagine anyone else touching me. That, for me, there needs to be love with sex. He asked me if I thought I knew my husband well, and whether I trusted that he would never hide anything from me. I said yes.

‘I am going to show you some photographs and videos that you are not going to like.’

I sensed something rising in his voice – not only embarrassment, but a curious mix of danger and protectiveness. He told me that Dominique had been taken into custody for aggravated rape and for administering toxic substances. I think I burst into tears. I moved towards his desk and put my mask back on. He picked up a photograph and held it out to me. A woman in a suspender belt lying on her side. A Black man behind her, penetrating her.

‘That’s you in the photograph.’

‘No, that’s not me.’

I got out my glasses; he got out another photograph. The same woman on her back, a tattooed man alongside her.

‘That’s you.’

‘No.’

I did not recognise those men. Nor that woman. Her cheek was so floppy, her mouth so limp. She looked like a rag doll.

A third photograph. The man had kept his firefighter’s sweater on.

I couldn’t hear what the police officer was saying. Or rather, I could hear him but it had nothing to do with me. It was like the echo of a faraway voice. ‘This is your bedroom. Aren’t those your bedside lamps?’

So? That is not me lying lifeless on the bed. It’s a photoshopped picture. Made by someone trying to hurt Dominique. Just last night while we were watching the news on television, there was a woman who had been intubated because of COVID, and he’d said how he would hate to see me like that. The officer says a number. He tells me fifty-three men had come to my house to rape me. I ask for water. My mouth is paralysed. A psychologist comes into the office. A young woman. I don’t need her. I am far away, even though we are in the same room. I am secure in my happiness, our happiness. Our fiftieth wedding anniversary is coming up, and the memory of how we met is still clear in my mind. His smile. His shy expression. His long, curly hair falling to his shoulders. His Breton sweater. He was going to love me. My brain shut down in Deputy Sergeant Perret’s office. 

***

CHAPTER 15

The trial, set to begin in Avignon in the autumn, was fast approaching. I thought about it all the time. My two lawyers and I were busy preparing for it. I always referred to them now as ‘the boys’, an affectionate term that reflected how important they were in my life. They were still unfailingly tactful and reserved with me. In that respect, we were all very much alike.

Stéphane and Antoine had requested that I read the writ of indictment in its entirety. Four hundred pages. A full account of everything I had discovered and been told over the last few years. This time it was not going to be possible to take in the facts bit by bit, as I had always insisted on doing. I was going to have to read it all in one go, the detailed descriptions of how my husband and dozens of strangers had raped me over the course of ten years.

Jean-Loup printed the whole thing out for me – I didn’t want to read it on a computer screen. I wanted to be able to go through the big sheaf of pages alone, curled up inside or out in a comfortable chair. The account began with a long list of the accused. Their names, occupations, addresses. I highlighted their dates of birth. 1997 … 1988 … I was born in 1952. Their youth was baffling, and made it all the more appalling.

Then, for each one, the facts. Abhorrent, unspeakably cruel. And entirely absent from my memory, so distant from anything I could imagine, almost unreal, despite being written down in black and white in language that managed to be both vulgar and official. And present throughout, this inert woman, whom they manhandled and dared to describe as consenting.

My stomach tightened. I had to keep putting the pages down to catch my breath. The dates were particularly distressing. I could picture where we were, what had happened before and afterwards, what we were doing then in our lives, what I thought was happiness. That was my birthday. That was the New Year’s Eve we’d decided for once to stay in, just the two of us, after the children had gone home.

Jean-Loup was reading the pages at the same time. It didn’t make me feel uncomfortable. ‘How on earth did your body tolerate all this?’ he asked me once or twice. Being asked this unanswerable question felt like plunging straight into the horror of what had happened, while at the same time watching it drift away and hearing myself say I had survived. I realised I was ready. Antoine and Stéphane didn’t conceal from me the aspect of the trial that was extremely unusual for them too: the fact that there were fifty-one defendants. A pack of rapists. Fifty strangers and the man who was once my husband.

I was impatient to see Dominique in court. The others I feared because of how many they were. I found myself worrying more and more about the closed door of the courtroom, which was supposed to protect me from the prying eyes of the public and the media. I was beginning to realise that a closed hearing meant I would be alone with them. Locked in with them. It was a vague sense I had, difficult to formulate in words. I hadn’t discussed it with anyone, but as the trial drew near I kept imagining myself hostage to their gaze, their lies, their cowardice and their contempt. The charges against them were overwhelming, the evidence unprecedented, but the fact remained that there would be fifty-one men gathered in the courtroom. Their voices would be louder than mine. And all their eyes would be on me as they stood shoulder to shoulder, like a wall.

Maybe I was handing them a gift. Maybe I was actually protecting them by asking for the trial to be held behind closed doors. No one would ever know what they had done to me. There would be no journalists present to say their names and describe their crimes. No one beyond those involved in the trial would see their faces, look them up and down and wonder how to pick out the rapists among their neighbours and colleagues, though apparently it is so very easy to recruit them.

Perhaps most importantly of all, no woman would be able to enter the courtroom and feel a little less alone; if I hadn’t noticed anything, it must surely have happened to others. Apart from the judges, there would be only me, my children and my lawyers, Antoine and Stéphane, facing a horde of men and their forty-five defence lawyers.

I had ardently wanted a closed hearing. I had said it again to the magistrate a few months earlier. It was so clear to me that I hadn’t even discussed it with my lawyers. When my previous lawyer had originally suggested having an open hearing as a way of staging a massive public trial of violence against women, I had categorically refused. I did not wish to have my relationship with Dominique exposed to the eyes of the world.

I believed that justice must be done but I did not want to be in the spotlight, forever the victim, ‘that poor woman’ — she wasn’t me, and she wasn’t the person I wanted to be.

But then, one day in May, I changed my mind. I was walking alone through the forest with the intention of coming back along the beach. The more I walked, the more my doubts grew. If Dominique had been alone in the dock, I would have felt there was no alternative to a closed hearing, but now? A flood of questions filled my head, a strange blend of dread, anger and confidence too, for I was stronger now, no longer the person who had lost everything.

Jean-Loup and I were living together now. The path I was following led back to his house — our house. Just a few months earlier, I was still trying to keep out of the way as much as possible when his children came to visit. On the night of his son’s thirtieth birthday, for example, I had planned to spend the evening alone in my little house, until Victor phoned and asked me to join them. He wanted me there.

Most importantly of all, I had my own children back. The summer we had spent together, followed by Christmas and New Year, seemed to have brought us closer. My family was healing. I was happy that we were speaking on the phone more often. I kept up to date with their news, heard the voices of my grandchildren whom I had missed so much. We were each privately dealing with the trial of the father and husband in our own way, but we would be in court together, to seek, if not meaning in all that had happened to us, at least some kind of closure.

I arrived at the beach. The sea air was brisk, it filled my lungs, I felt exposed to the elements, small but utterly alive. I had the physical sensation that I needed the rest of the world. I didn’t want to be alone any more. So many strangers had shown me such kindness, made me feel welcome when I had nothing left. I wasn’t scared of being seen now, of people knowing. Shame has to change sides. The words I’d first heard over a decade ago, a slogan supporting women who had survived rape and domestic violence, came into my head like a refrain, as if tiny blades were honing my thoughts.

Everyone needs to see the faces of the fifty-one rapists. They should be the ones to hang their heads in shame, not me. I climbed the dune to a small promontory where the coastal path starts getting steeper, marking the end of my walk and the turning towards Jean-Loup’s house. But at the top of the hill I stopped for a moment and gazed into the distance where the sky meets the sea. I knew then that the door to the courtroom had to be opened.

I got home to find Jean-Loup setting the table for lunch. I told him I had decided that I wanted the court proceedings to be open to the media and the public. Very calmly, he replied that it was up to me and he understood. Almost as if he had known it was coming.

After we’d finished eating, I called Stéphane.

‘Are you sure, Gisèle?’ he asked, astonished at my change of heart.

A little later he and Antoine called me back to ask me to think it over. They gave me a week. But I had made my decision. It liberated me. The next morning I called to tell them I was sure. Straight afterwards I phoned (my daughter) Caroline. She was pleased; she hadn’t forgotten that our first lawyer had suggested this nearly four years ago. (My sons) David and Florian also approved. Of course, none of us could imagine the coming storm — it was impossible to foresee. Nor did I wish for it. We agreed that I would be in court for the first two weeks of the trial, after which my lawyers and their team would speak on my behalf. When I’m struggling, I hide myself away. And it was those bastards I wanted to be put in the spotlight, not me.

Today, looking back on the moment I made the decision, I am aware that had I been twenty years younger, I probably wouldn’t have dared request that the case be heard in open court. I would have been too afraid of the looks: those damn looks that women of my generation have always had to contend with; those damn looks that make you waver in the morning between a dress and trousers, that follow you or ignore you, flatter you or embarrass you; those damn looks that seem to tell you who you are or what you’re worth, only to forsake you as you age.

Excerpted from A Hymn to Life: Shame has to Change Sides by Gisèle Pelicot, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver. Copyright © 2026 Gisèle Pelicot. English translation copyright © 2026 Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver. Published by Alfred A. Knopf Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.