Gisèle Pelicot, who became a global symbol of courage during the trial of her ex-husband and the dozens of men who raped her while she was unconscious, has described her shock when police first showed her images of the crimes, likening herself to a “rag doll”.
In extracts from her forthcoming memoir, A Hymn to Life, Pelicot, 73, describes her shock when police told her of the actions of her ex-husband Dominique, whom she considered “a great guy” and had shared her life with for 50 years.
She tells of her world falling apart on 2 November 2020 when she was first told her then husband had been drugging and raping her and inviting strangers to rape her, in extracts in Le Monde from the French-language version of the book that will be published simultaneously across the world in 22 languages next week.
Dominique Pelicot had been summoned by police for questioning after a supermarket security guard caught him secretly filming up women’s skirts.
Gisèle Pelicot had accompanied him to the police station and was completely unprepared for the bombshell delivered by the officer, Laurent Perret. He said: “I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you. That’s you in this photo.”
Pelicot said she did not believe the inert woman lying on the bed 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 the book.
“My brain stopped working in the office of Deputy Police Sergeant Perret.”
Pelicot became known internationally last year when she waived her right to anonymity in the trial that shocked the world.
Dominique Pelicot had for over almost a decade crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her mashed potato, coffee or ice-cream and invited dozens of men to rape her in the village of Mazan in south-east France, where the couple had retired. She had been in a state akin to a coma. A total of 51 men were found guilty of rape or sexual assault.
In the book extracts, Pelicot describes her decision to make the trial public. She said if she had kept the trial behind closed doors – as usually happened in such cases – it would have protected her abusers and left her alone with them in court, “hostage to their looks, their lies, their cowardice and their scorn”.
She wrote: “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 … Above all, not a single woman could walk in and sit in the courtroom to feel less alone.”
She said if she had been 20 years younger: “I might not have dared to refuse a closed-door hearing.
“I would have feared the stares. 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.”
The launch of Pelicot’s book, co-written with the French author Judith Perrignon, is considered a major publishing event as it is released simultaneously across the world on 17 February.
The British actor Emma Thompson will narrate the audiobook in English. In a social media post, Thompson said the “absolutely extraordinary” story was “difficult to read out loud” but that it inspired “courage and compassion but also crucially demands change”.
