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Gisele Pelicot has said her daughter set free an ‘inhuman’ scream after she told her concerning the sexual violence she suffered by the hands of her ex-husband.
The 73-year-old spoke of the harrowing moment she had to inform her three children, David, Caroline and Florian, of their father, Dominque Pelicot’s unspeakable crimes.
He was found guilty in 2024 of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife for nearly a decade, and alluring dozens of strangers to rape her.
Gisele, who’s releasing her memoirs soon, remembers the moments she made three separate phone calls to every of her children, which she described as the toughest thing she has ever needed to do.
‘I used to be well aware that for my children it was going to be immensely difficult,’ she told BBC Newsnight.
Speaking of her children’s response, she recalls the moment her daughter Caroline screamed in shock at her father’s actions toward her mother.
‘I heard my daughter scream. It was almost inhuman, that scream,’ she said.
She described her eldest child, David, as being in a state of shock, while Florian, the youngest, immediately checked in on his mother’s wellbeing asking her how she was.
She added in her interview with the BBC: ‘They realised I used to be alone, and that I’d do something silly. For them, too, it was like an explosion.’
A day after those phone calls, her children travelled to be along with her in Mazan.
Gisele watched as her children destroyed or threw out any belongings, photos or furniture regarding their father, in an try to erase him from their lives.
‘I told myself that my life was in ruins, that I had nothing left other than my children,’ she said.
Her remarks come just days after her television interview, since exposing the sexual violence carried out by her ex-husband and dozens of other men.
Despite not talking to 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 standard 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 along 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 commenced private chats with potential recruits, telling them he was ‘in search of 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 shouldn’t 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.
Get in contact with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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