Gisele Pelicot presents inspiring message to fellow rape survivors in her first TV interview and divulges why she determined to go public throughout husband’s trial
Gisele Pelicot has offered an inspiring message to survivors of sexual abuse in her first television interview since her ex-husband and 50 other men were jailed for rape.
The 73-year-old also revealed that she decided to waive her anonymity ahead of the trial to fight for the ‘collective’ and prove to other victims that ‘they could too’.
‘Shame sticks to you,’ she said this week. ‘It sticks to your skin. And that shame is a double sentence, it’s a suffering you inflict on yourself.
‘I said to myself that fighting against that on an individual level was also fighting for the collective. I said if I could do it, other people could too. My message of hope to all victims is never have shame.’
The interview with France 5 television comes a little more than a year after Ms Pelicot bravely watched on in court as Dominique Pelicot – her husband of half a century – was sentenced to 20 years in prison for rape and sexual assaults. He was found guilty on all charges.
Some 50 other men were also jailed for rapes and sexual assaults against Ms Pelicot, with sentences ranging from three to 15 years. Another man was convicted of drugging and raping his own wife with Dominique’s help.
Ms Pelicot, who has become an emblem of the fight against sexual violence, has spoken out ahead of the release of her upcoming memoir Et la joie de vivre, which translates to A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides.
The book sees the Frenchwoman tell her story of courage and survival. In extracts released this week in Le Monde, she writes about the day her world fell apart in November 2020 when her then-husband was summoned by police amid allegations of up-skirting.
Gisele Pelicot has offered an inspiring message to survivors of sexual abuse in her first television interview since her ex-husband and 50 other men were jailed for raping her
Ms Pelicot, 73, has revealed that she decided to waive her anonymity ahead of the trial to fight for the ‘collective’ and prove to other victims that ‘they could too’ (Pictured: Ms. Pelicot speaking to journalists in December 2024)
Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison
Ms Pelicot accompanied him and was completely unprepared for the bombshell delivered by the officer, Laurent Perret.
Gradually, and with care, he explained how the man she regarded as a loving husband and whom she described as ‘a super guy’ had, in fact, made her the unwitting victim of his perversions.
‘I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you,’ the officer said, she recounts in the book.
The first showed a man raping a woman who had been lying on her side and dressed up in a suspender belt.
‘That’s you in this photo,’ the officer said.
He then showed her another photo, and another after that — drawn from a collection of images that Dominique took of his wife over the years when he regularly knocked her unconscious by lacing her food and drink with drugs, so strangers he invited to their home could assault her while he filmed.
Ms Pelicot couldn’t believe that the inert woman in the photos was her.
‘I didn’t recognise the individuals. Nor this woman. Her cheek was so flabby. Her mouth so limp. She was a rag doll,’ she writes in her book.
‘My brain stopped working in the office of Deputy Police Sergeant Perret.’
The shocking case and her courage in demanding that it be tried in open court spurred a national reckoning about the blight of rape culture. The harrowing trial ended in December 2024 with guilty verdicts for all 51 defendants.
In her book, Ms Pelicot also revealed how her partner, Jean-Loup, whom she met in the summer of 2023, became her pillar of strength as the trial neared.
Ms Pelicot says that her decision to waive her anonymity during the trial made her feel less alone (Pictured outside the Avignon courthouse in November 2024)
In her book, Ms Pelicot also revealed how her partner, Jean-Loup, whom she met in the summer of 2023, became her pillar of strength as the trial neared (Pictured in October 2025)
She reveals how Jean-Loup printed the 400-page indictment her lawyers wanted her to read so she would not have to read it on a screen.
She also describes how, in reading all of the horrific details of what she endured, she became ready to face the courtroom, due to her confidence in her relationship as well as her age.
‘I wasn’t afraid of my wrinkles, nor my body. I loved Jean-Loup, and he loved me. My happiness also played a part.’
In the book extracts, Ms Pelicot also says that accepting the possibility of a closed-door trial would have protected her abusers and left her alone with them in court, ‘hostage to their looks, their lies, their cowardice and their scorn’.
‘No one would know what they had done to me. Not a single journalist would be there to write their names next to their crimes,’ she explains. ‘Above all, not a single woman could walk in and sit in the courtroom to feel less alone.’
The 73-year-old adds that had she been twenty years younger, ‘I might not have dared to refuse a closed-door hearing.’
‘I would have feared the stares,’ she writes. ‘Those damned stares a woman of my generation has always had to contend with, those damned stares that make you hesitate in the morning between trousers and a dress, that follow you or ignore you, flatter you and embarrass you. Those damned stares that are supposed to tell you who you are, what you’re worth, and then abandon you as you grow older.’
She says she also felt ‘nourished and warmed’ by ‘that crowd outside, swelling and escorting me every day’ near the court. ‘That crowd saved me.’
In an interview with Télérama magazine, Gisèle said her nearly 50-year marriage with Dominique Pelicot wasn’t all built on lies and that her book ‘isn’t the story of a woman who has only known pain’.
‘I am an unconditional optimist,’ she said. ‘Despite what I experienced and the fact that I am 73 years old, I am very much alive, and I allow myself to be happy. One can make friends, and even fall in love again.’
