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Gisele Pelicot has given her first television interview since exposing the sexual violence she suffered by the hands of her ex-husband and dozens of other men.
The 73-year-old, who’s releasing her memoirs soon, revealed harrowing details of when she was told of her ex-husband’s unspeakable crimes.
Her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, was found guilty in 2024 of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife for nearly a decade, and welcoming dozens of strangers to rape her.
Despite not chatting with her husband in court, Pelicot says she has one thing she still desires to do for closure.
She said: ‘I would like to look him directly in the attention and ask him, ‘Why did you try this?’’
Gisele also recounted how she froze when a detective sat her down and first showed her images of herself, unconscious, being assaulted.
‘I don’t recognise myself in those photos. I said, ‘That’s not me.’ Then I placed on my glasses, and there I discovered this lifeless woman with a person she didn’t know on her bed.
‘I feel my brain disassociated.’
Until police knocked on her door 4 years ago, exposing the crimes, she lived a traditional life as a wife, mother, and grandmother.
Under French law, the names of victims are normally kept out of the press, but she insisted on a public trial in an try to expose her ex and the 50 men that he’s accused of inviting to rape her.
She allowed journalists to publish her full name, and the court to exhibit explicit videos recorded by her husband showing men engaging in sexual activity together with her while unconscious.
Gisele has said her decisions were in solidarity with all the opposite women who go unrecognised as victims of sexual crimes.
‘I actually have decided to not be ashamed, I actually have done nothing flawed,’ she previously told the court. ‘They’re those who have to be ashamed.
‘I’m not expressing hatred or hate, but I’m determined that things change on this society.’
Her ex-husband recruited men online, on the now-defunct website called Coco, and started private chats with potential recruits, telling them he was ‘on the lookout for someone to abuse my sleeping, drugged wife’.
To maintain her unconscious, he crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and drinks.
The horror of this case will not be simply that Pelicot, in his own words, arranged for men to rape his wife; it’s that he also had no difficulty finding dozens of them to participate.
Aged between 26 and 74, they included a nurse, a journalist, a jail warden, a neighborhood councillor, a soldier, lorry drivers, and farm staff.
Almost two years on from her ex-husband’s conviction, Gisele revealed she has met a person – after never considering she would fall in love again.
‘Meeting him was incredible. I met this man who’s also been through difficult times, and it’s modified our lives,’ she said.
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