On November 2, 2020, Gisèle Pelicot’s world turned upside down when she walked into a police station in Carpentras, southern France, believing she was accompanying her now ex-husband, Dominique, over a minor incident. Within minutes, an officer, Laurent Perret, showed her photographs that dismantled nearly five decades of their marriage.
On February 10, 2026, the French newspaper, Le Monde, published some extracts from Pelicot’s forthcoming memoir, A Hymn to Life.
She described how police revealed that Dominique had been dr*gging her for years and inviting strangers to r*pe her while she was unconscious in their home in Mazan, Provence.
Trigger warning: This article contains mentions of s*xual as*ault.
Gisèle Pelicot considered her ex-husband Dominique a “great guy” before learning how he had been dr*gging and r*ping her for years
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In September 2020, Dominique Pelicot was detained after being caught secretly filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket.
While examining his phone and electronic devices, investigators discovered thousands of photos and videos showing Gisèle unconscious in their bedroom with different men.
At the police station, Perret warned her, “I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you. That’s you in this photo.”
She did not immediately recognize herself. “I didn’t recognize the individuals. Nor this woman,” she later wrote in her memoir. “Her cheek was so flabby. Her mouth so limp. She was a rag doll.”
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Gisèle, who considered Dominique a “great guy,” questioned whether it was truly her. Perret pointed out details of the room.
“This is your room, Mrs. Pelicot. These are your bedside lamps. We searched your home. These are your belongings.”
She further described the moment as mental paralysis, adding, “My brain stopped working in the office of Deputy Police Sergeant Perret.” Officers told her that her husband was in custody and that she had been r*ped “many times.”
By that time, dozens of men had already been identified through the videos.
The 73-year-old was a*used and r*ped for nearly a decade inside their home in Mazan
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In 2024, court proceedings in Avignon established that between 2011 and 2020, Dominique crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into his wife’s mashed potatoes, ice cream, and coffee.
Toxicology experts later identified that she was left in a state similar to general anesthesia.
While she remained unconscious, Dominique invited men he contacted through online chatrooms, including one titled “without her knowledge,” to come to their home and r*pe her.
He filmed and catalogued the as*aults on a hard drive in a file labeled “a*use.”
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It was discovered that a total of 51 men, aged between 26 and 74, were found guilty in December 2024. Dominique was sentenced to 20 years in prison, while forty-seven men were convicted of r*pe, two of attempted r*pe, and two of s*xual a*sault.
During the trial, some defendants claimed they believed the acts were consensual.
“I didn’t wake up one morning and say to myself, ‘hey, today I’m going to commit a crime,’” one said. Another argued he did not understand consent at the time.
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However, Gisèle rejected those arguments during subsequent appeal hearings in Nîmes in October 2025, stating, “This is not a s*x scene, it is r*pe. And without a c*ndom.”
She added directly to one defendant, “When did I ever give you consent? Never.”
Her decision to make the trial public became central to the case’s impact.
Gisèle Pelicot decided to waive her right to anonymity as she wanted the public to be a witness to the case
French law typically allows s*xual a*sault trials to be held behind closed doors. However, Gisèle requested that hers remain public when proceedings began on September 2, 2024, in Avignon.
In extracts from A Hymn to Life, she explained that a closed-door hearing would have protected the accused and silenced the wider issue.
She wrote that she did not want to sit alone in court “hostage to their looks, their lies, their cowardice and their scorn.”
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“No one would know what they had done to me. Not a single journalist would be there to write their names next to their crimes … Above all, not a single woman could walk in and sit in the courtroom to feel less alone.”
Outside the courthouse in December 2024, after the verdicts were delivered, she said, “When I opened the doors to this trial, I wanted all of society to be a witness.”
In her first television interview on France 5 in February 2026, she delivered a bold statement calling on victims to never be ashamed
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“Shame sticks to you, it sticks to your skin,” she said. “And that shame is a double sentence, it’s a suffering you inflict on yourself.”
Her message to other victims was, “I said to myself that fighting against that on an individual level was also fighting for the collective. I said if I could do it, other people could too … My message of hope to all victims is never have shame.”
While the main trial concluded in December 2024, appeals continued into 2025 and 2026
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One of the convicted men, Husamettin Dogan, appealed his nine-year sentence. During his retrial at the Nimes court of appeal in October 2025, video evidence again showed Pelicot unconscious.
But Dogan maintained he had not committed r*pe. In February 2026, the court upheld his conviction and increased his sentence to 10 years.
Throughout the proceedings, Pelicot continued to attend court and testify.
“For me, the harm has been done – I will need to rebuild from these ruins, and I think I’m on the right road,” she said while addressing the appeal trial.
“But what I want to say to others is that I never regretted my decisions, from filing a legal complaint until today. I want to say to victims to never be ashamed of what was imposed on them, because they’re never responsible.”
Prosecutor Dominique Sie told the Nimes court, “Now we must change r*pe culture to a culture of consent.”
“As long as you refuse to admit it, it’s not just a woman, it’s an entire sordid social system that you are endorsing.”
In February 2026, ahead of the global release of her memoir in 22 languages, Pelicot stated that she wanted to “tell my story in my own words.. to convey a message of strength and courage to all those who are subjected to difficult ordeals.”
Her book, co-written with the French author Judith Perrignon, will be released globally on February 17.
“Hard to find words for the emotions this evokes,” wrote one netizen
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