This story discusses events that might be disturbing to some readers.
About a year after a mass rape trial that captured global attention and galvanized a feminist movement in France, Gisèle Pelicot is stepping back into the public spotlight with the release of her deeply vulnerable memoir.
In “A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides,” 73-year-old Gisèle Pelicot recounts her years-long ordeal, discovering that her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot, had repeatedly drugged her and brought dozens of strangers to their home to rape her, and later seeking justice in a French court.
The deliberate and violent nature of the crimes and the range of perpetrators involved had shocked the nation when the case first became public in 2021, on the heels of France’s #MeToo movement, #BalanceTonPorc, which roughly translates to “expose your pig,” and amidst a reckoning over attitudes toward incest and child abuse. Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to open the trial to the public in 2024 rather than remain anonymous, as French law allows in sexual abuse cases, thrust the now 73-year-old retiree into the spotlight and turned her into a global feminist icon.
She recounts this journey, including the harrowing discovery of her now ex-husband’s years of deceit and abuse, in a nearly 250-page book. It was written alongside ghostwriter Judith Perrignon, translated into English by Natasha Lehrer and Ruth Diver, and published by Penguin Press. It is available on bookshelves Tuesday, Feb. 17. The book’s subtitle, “shame has to change sides,” was the slogan used by many of Gisèle Pelicot’s supporters and during demonstrations around the time of the trial, advocating for a shift in how the judicial system defines sexual violence and consent. It was also a rallying cry for Gisèle Pelicot, who recalled the phrase when deciding to open up the trial to the public.
“Everyone needs to see the faces of the fifty-one rapists,” she writes. “They should be the ones to hang their heads in shame, not me.”
Gisèle Pelicot begins her story with a 2020 phone call from local police that would end up changing her life, and that of her family, forever. Her husband, Dominique Pelicot, now 73, had been arrested for filming up women’s skirts at a grocery store. When investigators seized his computer, phones, and other devices, they found roughly 300 photos and videos documenting Gisèle Pelicot’s abuse at the hands of dozens of men.
She does not shy away from recounting the brutal details of what the assailants did to her, emotionally and physically, or the years of internal struggle she endured to try to make sense of how her life partner of five decades could have subjected her to such unspeakable betrayal and sexual violence. In that sense, large sections of the book read more like a psychological horror than a memoir, as her impression of her life and marriage − which she had for years considered “quiet” and “happy” − painfully and abruptly unraveled.
During that first sit-down with police in 2020, one official asked her to describe her husband’s character.
“He’s kind, attentive,” she recalls saying. “He’s a lovely guy. That’s why we’re still together.”
After a lengthy trial, 51 men were convicted in 2024 of raping and attempting to rape Pelicot, including her husband, who drugged and arranged the abuse over many years. Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison. The 50 men he invited to abuse his wife were sentenced to three to 15 years. Two were convicted of attempted rape and two of sexual assault. The remainder were convicted of rape.
Gisèle Pelicot admits in the book that she expects to spend the rest of her life “puzzling through” her memories of her life with her ex-husband and abuser, and try to “salvage a few good ones.” But she writes that she refuses to be overcome by hatred or be seen as a victim.
Her interrogations are often deeply introspective. The book is interspersed with chapters recounting her childhood and familial tragedies: how she met Dominique, their financial struggles and marital woes, and her career working for France’s electricity supplier.
It’s all told from the vantage point of a woman trying to make sense of her life in the face of devastation, sometimes grasping for signs that only hindsight can uncover. Beer that turned green − possibly a chemical reaction with the drugs Dominque Pelicot had been slipping into her drinks and food to render her unconscious for the rapes. Unexplained stains on a new pair of trousers. Most disturbingly, years of severe health problems and memory loss that convinced her she would die, as her mother had, of a brain tumor.
The men who raped her ranged in age from 26 to 74, and came to be known during the trial as “Mr. Everyman.” One was a firefighter, another a soldier, a third a nurse. Several had spouses and families. The trial of Dominique Pelicot and the others ended in December 2024 with guilty verdicts for all 51 defendants. Dominique Pelicot himself confessed to his crimes, though many of the other convicted rapists denied what they had done, even in the face of video evidence.
Gisèle Pelicot writes about this experience: How she found solace looking at photos on her phone of her grandchildren, the sea and the landscape around the home she once shared with her husband in Provence, when the videos of her rapes were played in the courtroom. And, how groups of the defendants would loudly talk and high-five each other during breaks in the proceedings, she wrote, bonding in a cafe across the street over rounds of beers, all “convinced they had done nothing wrong.”
Pelicot is an unexpected feminist hero who, by her accounts, knew about the feminist movements that unfolded during her life, but saw herself as “removed” from them. She now embraces her newfound mantle as a symbol of the current feminist wave.
“And here I am, in my seventies, a martyr, the symbol of a new feminist wave that I hardly know a thing about,” she writes. “This time I won’t turn away from it.”
Pelicot also spends a great deal of time writing about the impacts of her ex-husband’s abuse on her family − especially the couple’s three grown children, who have grappled with the discovery of their father’s crimes and the impact of the abuse on their mother. Her relationship with her daughter, Caroline Darian, has been especially tense, as Darian felt her mother wasn’t supportive enough of her concerns that she might have been abused by her father. Among the mountains of materials seized by police in the investigations, they found Dominique Pelicot had taken photos of his daughter sleeping and secretly filmed her naked.
Yet for all the monstrousness revealed in Pelicot’s story, her steadfast courage and optimism that she will persevere acts as a buoy, reeling the reader back with her own sense of hope for the future when, many times, her retellings of her abusers’ cruelty turn unbearable. She also recounts how she found love again in the run-up to the trial, and how that has helped her rediscover her joie de vivre − the title of the book in its original French.
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support to survivors and their loved ones in English and Spanish at: 800.656.HOPE (4673) andHotline.RAINN.org and en EspañolRAINN.org/es.
Kathryn Palmer is a politics reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her atkapalmer@usatoday.com and on X @KathrynPlmr. Sign up for her daily politics newsletterhere.