Gisèle Pelicot has said she needs to visit prison to look her abusive ex-husband “straight in the eye” after his conviction for drugging her and inviting dozens of men to rape her in a case that shocked France and the rest of the world.
Pelicot, 73, said she needed “answers” from Dominique Pelicot over the potential abuse of their daughter and the case of an estate agent who was raped and murdered in 1991, which he is under investigation for.
Dominique Pelicot was jailed for 20 years by a French court in December 2024 after being found guilty of the attacks, alongside 50 other men whom he invited to rape and sexually assault his wife. There are thought to have been at least 70 perpetrators but police have not been able to identify them all.
Questions also remain over whether the couple’s daughter, Caroline Darian, was also abused by Dominique, something that caused a rift when Darian accused her mother of not believing her when police discovered two photos of her unconscious and wearing underwear she did not recognise.
Pelicot said the revelations had not brought the family together, instead describing them as “an explosion that blows everything away”, but she is rebuilding her relationship with her daughter whom she now speaks to every day on the phone.
She told the New York Times that the uncertainty for Darian was “inescapable hell”. “There are those two photos of her asleep that open up a lot of questions. But I don’t have any answers, and Monsieur Pelicot didn’t give her any answers either.”
Pelicot said of her ex-husband: “I hope that when we’re face to face, he’ll be able to tell me the truth, both about his daughter and about everything else he’s now accused of. Maybe he’ll have some remorse. I’m still holding on to that hope. Maybe I’m naive, maybe I won’t get an answer.”
Pelicot described the day in November 2020 when she had been brought into the station to discuss, she thought, an incident where her then-husband was caught filming up women’s skirts.
She saw a police officer’s “face start to change” as he pointed to a stack of files. She was asked if she recognised herself in a photo of a woman being raped by a man she did not know.
“And of course I didn’t recognise myself, because I was with a man I didn’t know, who was raping me. I said: ‘I don’t know this man’ … He shows me a second photo, which is pretty much the same, and he says: ‘That’s you there.’ I say no, and he says: ‘This is your room, Madame Pelicot, these are your bedside lamps. We searched your home, these are your belongings.’”
The police officer told her Dominique was in custody and that 53 people had been arrested. “He tells me that I have been raped about 200 times. I say: ‘But that’s not possible.’ And then I ask for a glass of water because I can’t talk any more.”
She described later watching the videos. “I’m a rag doll. It’s as if I’ve come out of surgery, because I’m completely anaesthetised. These men, when you see what they’re doing to me – how is it possible that my body couldn’t feel anything? … Fortunately for me, I have no memories, because I think I would have killed myself afterward.”
She described feeling shame and spending “hours in the shower trying to wash away this filth, this dirt that makes you feel dehumanised”.
Pelicot also talked about specific incidents, including a crown on one of her teeth coming loose, which she later realised was caused by oral rape.
“When I discovered the videos showing the violence these men inflicted on me, in my limp mouth – they have to hold my head because my face is falling, I have no muscle tone – and Monsieur Pelicot doesn’t even react. There is no empathy, no pity for this woman who is there, completely dead in her bed. It was incredibly violent to tell myself that even that, they didn’t spare me.”
During the trial, Pelicot waived her right to anonymity as a survivor of sexual abuse. “The shame is theirs,” she famously stated of her abusers – and became a global feminist icon, leaving court each day to applause from gathered crowds.
Support poured in from high-profile people, including the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who thanked her for her “dignity and courage”, and Queen Camilla of the UK.
In a letter, Camilla wrote to express her “heartfelt admiration for the courage, grace and dignity with which you have faced the horrific crimes committed against you”.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight at the weekend, Pelicot said: “I felt moved and very honoured that she had become aware of what had happened to me. I am grateful to her.”
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