Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault and rape which some readers may find distressing.
Gisèle Pelicot has opened up about the red flags she recognized during the years of abuse she endured at the hands of her husband, Dominique Pelicot.
Over the span of 2011 to 2020, Gisèle’s husband of more than three decades drugged and sexually assaulted her, and permitted more than 50 other men to do the same.
Pelicot documented these appalling acts and stored the footage on a hard drive marked ‘abuse’.
His arrest in 2020 for filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket unveiled the breadth of his heinous crimes.
Gisèle was completely unaware of the abuse until her husband was taken into custody after the supermarket incident. A police investigation later uncovered images on his laptop, revealing Gisèle being raped by other men while she was asleep.
In December 2024, Pelicot faced conviction for aggravated rape, as well as charges for attempted aggravated rape and taking indecent photographs of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law.
He received the maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
On the cusp of releasing her memoir, ‘A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides’, Gisèle appeared on France 5 for her first televised interview post-trial, shedding light on some warning signs she noted about her husband.
While living in Mazan, a quaint village in Southern France, Gisèle, now 73, noticed a yellow stain on her trousers that led her to suspect her husband might be drugging her.
“I asked him whether he might be drugging me, and then he started crying. Was it my subconscious? I don’t know,” the mother-of-three recalled.
Another incident involved a beer she was drinking, which seemed to change color. Pelicot claimed he had just added mint syrup. “At the time I didn’t think anything of it,” she added.
Gisèle shared how Pelicot poured the drink down the sink after she inquired about its strange color.
The Guardian reported during Pelicot’s trial that at least 83 men are believed to have assaulted Gisèle, though 51 men, including Pelicot, were ultimately convicted.
All but one of the 50 co-defendants faced rape charges.
If you’ve been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org.