A Hymn to Life

Gisèle Pelicot's memoir recounts how a nearly five-decade marriage was shattered by the revelation that her husband had been drugging her and arranging for dozens of strangers to rape her. The book moves between the unfolding legal case and Gisèle's personal history, tracing how a childhood shaped by loss forged both her resilience and the vulnerabilities that left her unable to see her husband's crimes.

On November 2, 2020, Gisèle accompanied Dominique Pelicot to the police station in Carpentras, in southern France, expecting a routine follow-up. Two months earlier, Dominique had confessed to being caught filming under women's skirts at a local supermarket, an incident that led to the seizure of his phone and computer. At the station, Deputy Sergeant Laurent Perret separated them. When Gisèle was called upstairs, Perret told her Dominique had been taken into custody for aggravated rape and administering toxic substances. He showed her photographs of a woman being penetrated by different men and told her the woman was her. Gisèle did not recognize herself; the woman's face was slack, her body limp. Perret told her 53 men had come to their house to rape her. Her mind, she writes, shut down entirely.

The memoir reaches back to the origins of Gisèle's life. Born in 1952 in Villingen, in occupied West Germany, where her father Yves was stationed with the French forces, Gisèle lost her mother Jeanne to a brain tumor when she was nearly nine. Her father eventually remarried a cold, miserly woman who hid food, demeaned the children, and made their adolescence miserable. Gisèle steeled herself, resolving to keep her mother's smile alive and forge her own independence.

In July 1971, at age 19, Gisèle met Dominique at her Aunt Andrée's house in the Indre countryside. He was a shy young electrician drawn to the warmth of her family. They married on April 14, 1973, in a simple ceremony; a wedding photograph was taken in the grounds of the Château d'Azay-le-Ferron. Dominique's own background was marked by his father Denis Pelicot's domestic tyranny, the suspected abuse of a foster child, and Dominique's sexual assault by a male nurse at age eight.

The couple settled near Paris and raised three children: David, Caroline, and Florian. Gisèle took a permanent position at EDF, the French national electricity supplier, where she rose steadily. Dominique's career was far less stable, cycling through estate agencies and telecom companies, leaving him deeply in debt. Around age 35, Gisèle had an affair with a younger colleague named Didier. When Dominique discovered it, he became violent. They reconciled, but Gisèle carried lasting guilt, wondering whether this period, coinciding with the death of Dominique's mother Juliette, was when something irreversible shifted in him. Their sex life grew increasingly dominated by his demands; he whispered fantasies about watching her with other men. Gisèle set firm boundaries, but Dominique resented them. His response, she learned only years later, was chemical submission: drugging her into unconsciousness and inviting strangers to rape her.

After the revelation at the police station, Gisèle called her children one by one: Caroline screamed, David vomited, and Florian stayed composed. Caroline made the critical connection that the memory lapses plaguing Gisèle for years, which doctors had attributed to early-onset Alzheimer's disease, were caused by drugs Dominique put in her food and wine. Police discovered blister packs of lorazepam, an anti-anxiety medication, hidden in walking boots in the garage. When the children arrived at the family home in Mazan, a village in Provence, Caroline destroyed the house in a rage, smashing plates and ripping up photo albums, while her brothers quietly emptied Dominique's desk. Caroline was then shown photographs from Dominique's computer of herself asleep and was tormented from that point by the fear that her father had assaulted her too.

The family fled to Paris. Forensic examinations confirmed extremely high levels of intoxication in Gisèle's hair, along with bacterial infections, but crucially no Alzheimer's disease and no brain tumor. Her condition was reversible once she was away from Dominique. Working with examining magistrate Gwenola Journot in Avignon, Gisèle reconstructed a timeline and identified signals she had missed: bleach-like stains on trousers, a cocktail poured hastily down the sink, a glass of beer that had turned green. The poisoning had begun at least as early as 2011. Dominique had even drugged her three times in October 2020, after his arrest and his tearful promises to stop.

Gisèle moved to the Ile de Ré, off France's Atlantic coast, living alone for the first time. She began long walks, saw a therapist, and slowly rebuilt herself. She also learned that Dominique had organized a rape at Caroline's holiday house on the island during what Gisèle had believed was a pleasant family visit. In October 2022, police informed her that Dominique was also the principal suspect in an attempted rape from 1999 and the unsolved 1991 murder of Sophie Narme, a 23-year-old estate agent who had been drugged, raped, strangled, and stabbed. Dominique confessed to the attempted rape but denied the murder.

As the trial approached, Gisèle retained new attorneys Antoine Camus and Stéphane Babonneau, read the full 400-page indictment, and watched the videos for the first time alone. She saw her unconscious body and watched Dominique direct other men. In May 2024, she reversed her wish for a closed hearing, realizing a closed courtroom would leave her alone with 51 men and shield their identities. The phrase "shame has to change sides" came to her like a refrain.

The trial opened on September 2, 2024, at the Palais de Justice in Avignon. Over four months, Gisèle sat through aggressive defense tactics: Lawyers argued the word "rape" should not be used, suggested her body's secretions indicated pleasure, and claimed movements in the videos proved consciousness. She left the courtroom only twice. Crowds of women formed a daily guard of honor outside, and thousands of letters arrived. Midway through the trial, Gisèle declared her actions stemmed not from courage but from a determination to change a patriarchal, sexist society.

Dominique admitted to everything regarding Gisèle's rapes, even acknowledging the videos still aroused him. A psychiatrist testified that Dominique was entirely lacking in empathy. The question of whether he abused Caroline remained unresolved. In his final testimony, Dominique stated he had wanted to force "an insubmissive woman into submission," confirming the drugging was his punishment for Gisèle's refusals.

Dominique received the maximum sentence of 20 years and was also found guilty of recording and distributing images of Caroline and his daughters-in-law. All 50 co-defendants were convicted; none avoided prison. On sentencing day, a women's chorus sang outside the courthouse, and a banner reading "Merci Gisèle" hung from the battlements of Avignon.

The memoir closes with Gisèle reflecting on how her case contributed to a change in the French legal definition of rape. She was awarded the Légion d'honneur, France's highest order of merit, and named the most noteworthy person of 2024 in a national opinion poll. Her relationships with her children remain strained, but she expresses pride in Caroline's founding of the charity M'endors pas (Don't Put Me Under), which combats domestic chemical submission. Living with Jean-Loup, a partner she met on the Ile de Ré, Gisèle declares she has rediscovered her joie de vivre and is no longer afraid of being alone. She kept the name Pelicot, she writes, so her children and grandchildren need not be ashamed of it. Her grandchildren unknowingly saved her during the years of drugging, she reflects, since each trip to care for them was an escape from the house in Mazan.