On a November morning in 2020, over a final breakfast in her small house in Mazan in southern France, Gisele Pelicot had no idea that the life she knew was about to shatter. She was heading to a local police station after her husband, Dominique Pelicot, had been arrested two months earlier for secretly filming under women’s skirts in a supermarket. He insisted it was a one-off, promised therapy, and she planned to support him.
Led into a separate room that day, Gisele was shown images of a sexual assault. At first she did not recognize that the woman pictured was her. Investigators later uncovered more than 20,000 images documenting non-consensual sex. Over the course of a decade, Dominique repeatedly drugged his wife and—using the dark web—recruited men from their area to rape her while she was unconscious. Prosecutors say the abuse occurred at least 200 times.
The trial of Dominique and 50 identified accomplices opened in the fall of 2024. Gisele, by then divorced, decided the proceedings should be public and that the trial needed a face: hers. The court played the horrific videos openly. “Shame has to change sides,” she said, publicly naming perpetrators and enablers and challenging the culture that blames survivors.
During the three-and-a-half-month trial she was met each day by growing crowds of women who applauded her courage. International media reported on both her resilience and the humiliations defense lawyers sought to impose, as well as on the horrifying details of the abuse. Proceedings also disclosed that Dominique had secretly filmed his two daughters-in-law in the shower and kept nude photos of his daughter while she slept, wearing underwear that was not hers; authorities are still probing whether the daughter was assaulted and are investigating him on suspicion of murder.
Dominique Pelicot received a 20-year prison sentence—the maximum for rape in France—and all 50 accomplices were given lengthy terms.
Gisele, who has legally reverted to her birth name Gisele Guillou, published her memoir under the name she had become known by. A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides, written with journalist Judith Perrignon, is being released in 22 languages. At 73, she says earlier coverage never represented her fully.
In the book she tells her life story: a childhood marked by the early death of her mother, meeting the man she married and placing her trust in him, raising three children and achieving greater professional success than her husband. She describes the shock of discovering the extent of his depravity—how he routinely sedated her with powerful medication and exposed her to consequences such as memory loss, exhaustion and pelvic infections. In court, her former husband refused to watch the videos and photos again.
Gisele explains why she clung for so long to memories of a happy marriage: habit, caregiving and above all a need to understand, a stance her children found hard to accept and which created resentment and rifts between siblings. She admits actions like sending fresh laundry to her husband while he was in prison were part of that complicated response.
Her memoir is her attempt to explain how she survived and rebuilt her life. Ultimately she presents herself as the victor over the man who abused her. She has found new love and writes, “I didn’t die. I’m still able to trust others.” More than five years after the crimes came to light, Gisele Guillou has reclaimed her life and says she has rediscovered joy.
This article was originally written in German.