The sinister signs of her husband’s crimes Gisèle Pelicot only saw after the trial

MEMOIR
A Hymn to Life: Shame has to Change Sides
Gisèle Pelicot
Bodley Head, $36.99

Warning: Graphic content

On November 2, 2020, Gisèle Pelicot, a 67-year-old French retiree, accompanied her husband to their local police station. Officers had arrested him a month earlier after he was caught taking “upskirt” photographs of women in a supermarket.

The two were taken to separate rooms, with Pelicot assuming she would be told about these photographs in private. Instead, other images were shown. “I did not recognise … th[e] woman,” Pelicot writes in her valiant new memoir A Hymn to Life. “Her cheek was so floppy, her mouth so limp. She looked like a rag doll.” The series of stills were of Pelicot – drugged, lifeless and bound in her bed – being raped by countless men.

Pelicot, with remarkable candour and vulnerability, recounts a life fractured but ultimately rebuilt in the aftermath of sexual violence inflicted in the most heinous way. Across a decade, Pelicot’s husband (who she refers to throughout as Dominique: “I never used to call him that, I preferred affectionate nickname – Doumé, Mino – but afterwards, I didn’t know what to call him any more.“), regularly drugged her to unconsciousness, inviting dozens of men from the dark web to their house to rape her while he filmed these assaults.

The discovery of the rapes and the trial that followed sparked a global outcry, inspiring women to speak out against the prevalence of domestic sexual violence and its evil banality. Pelicot’s husband received the maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, while another 50 men were found guilty and each given prison time.

The decade prior for Pelicot had been punctuated by medical problems and a sense of psychic freefall: ongoing memory loss, medical tests for gynaecological issues and a plaguing fear of Alzheimer’s disease. Each was explained away by her gaslighting husband, who reassured her it was simply ageing, exhaustion or of no concern.

If there were never (mercifully) any memories of her assaults, there were sometimes grim physical signs the next day: a loosened dental crown or waking up soaked in sweat. “My body was telling me what was happening, but I couldn’t understand its message,” she writes.

In retrospect, Pelicot now sees there were other signs, such as the bleach stains on clothes (likely from husband’s cleaning up) and beers that turned green (from the drugs). And when the Pelicot children are clearing the family home of their father’s belongings after learning of his crimes, daughter Caroline rips up a painting her father had previously done of a nude woman and discovers it says “coercion” on the back of the canvas.

The couple had spent almost 50 years together, with Pelicot first meeting her husband in their youth and experiencing a storybook romance. Unlike her children, who “want to erase it all,” she shares fond memories of their early life, and even offers stories covering her husband’s difficult upbringing. Pelicot is compassionate in giving this Machiavellian monster some humanity, even if it only accentuates the inhumanity he later subjected her to.

There are the usual problems that beset couples during their marriage – balancing career and parenting, financial woes, extramarital affairs – but none that point to the horror that would await Pelicot by the man who “fell in love with me”.

As the trial looms, Pelicot realises that anger and denial won’t be an antidote to her trauma – taking control will. Acts of empowerment include replacing her legal counsel (“fed up with her sound bites”), deciding on an open trial (“everyone needs to see the faces of the 51 rapists”) and being identified by name herself (“I wasn’t scared of being seen now”).

Still, conflict breaks out between Pelicot and her daughter, Caroline Darian, who is convinced she was raped by her father after images surface of her undressing. Her mother’s apparent disbelief angers Darian and has since resulted in a painful rift between the two. (Darian published her own memoir last year; her father has denied ever assaulting his daughter.)

The 2024 trial itself proves a dehumanising ordeal: some wonder whether Pelicot may have participated in her rapes herself while others speculate on her level of physical pain while unconscious. But Pelicot’s faith in her decision to go public help her stay the course. This, and the outpouring of support shown from the many women who rally around her. For this reason, Pelicot never feels alone as she is speaking for the many: “This is not courage, but a deep urge and determination to change our patriarchal, sexist society”.

A Hymn to Life reveals the 73-year-old’s remarkable fortitude, a trait she insists shouldn’t define her but is difficult not to observe in this fearless self-portrait. The book’s subtitle, “shame must change sides”, highlights how Pelicot has bravely shifted her own by going so public – and stresses the same must apply to all survivors of sexual assault. It proves a rousing clarion call from one courageous woman who many thought might remain a victim, but ultimately refused to.

Life today affords Pelicot one final bit of important closure: she can again be alone at night. “I am no longer afraid of being alone,” she writes. “I am able to fall asleep in the dark, a great victory.”