Gisele Pelicot, whose husband was convicted of orchestrating a mass rape by dozens of men while she laid drugged and unconscious has published a memoir detailing the years of abuse she endured and her decision to confront her attackers publicly in a trial that shocked the world.Her newly released memoir, A Hymn to Life, revisits the 2024 mass rape case that turned Pelicot, 73, into a global symbol in the fight against sexual violence and prompted France to reform its rape law.In the memoir, Pelicot explains why she waived her right to anonymity during the trial.”No one would ever know what they had done to me. No one beyond those involved in the trial would see their faces, look them up and down and wonder how to pick out the rapists among their neighbours and colleagues.”Pelicot recounts the moment, the police revealed that her husband, Dominique Pelicot, had been drugging her for years and inviting strangers into their home to assault her.Initially, officers inquired whether the couple were swingers, when she replied that they were not, police showed her images of herself, unconscious in bed with unkown men.”The officer says a number. He tells me fifty-three men had come to my house to rape me,” the memoir reads.Pelicot describes returning home after learning the truth and hanging out her husband’s laundry. “I was like a dog waiting by the garden gate for its master,” she writes, capturing the disbelief and emotional paralysis that followed the revelation.In addition to her now ex-husband, 50 other men were ultimately convicted in connection with the crimes.She also recounts the distress of telling her friends and children, especially her daughter, Caroline who she knew would “go through hell and back.”During the trial, Pelicot never directly addressed her former husband, Dominique Pelicot. In her memoir, however, she write she intends to visit him in prison to seek answers.”Did you ever think, ‘I must stop’? Did you abuse our daughter? Did you commit the most abject crime of all? Do you have any idea of the hell we’re living in? Did you kill?” she writes, “I’ll ask him all these questions. I need answers; he owes me that much.”Throughout the proceedings, Pelicot says she drew strength from thousands of letters sent by women around the world and from the crowds who gathered daily outside the courtroom in solidarity.“Not long after the trial began, I started to be presented with a bundle of correspondence at the end of each day,” she writes. “I preferred to read their letters rather than the newspapers; they gave me the chance to listen to women’s voices.”She writes how the presence of women outside the courtroom gave her strength to fight what she was feeling inside.Despite enduring years of pain and betrayal, Pelicot rebuilt her life. In the book, she recounts meeting a new partner through mutual friends. “The evening I met him, I was light-headed with happiness.””I needed to love again. I wasn’t afraid. I still have faith in people. Once, that was my greatest weakness. Now it is my strength. My revenge.”Her story, of unimaginable agony, is now helping women across the world fight injustice and is a fuel for legal and social change in France and beyond.
