History of Gisèle Pelicot told on the first person arrives today at the bookstores

“ Qi tell my story in my own words. With this book, I hope to send a message of strength and courage to all who may be going through difficult times. Never to be ashamed”, wrote Gisèle Pelicot, explaining the decision to make his memories public.

Written with French journalist and novelist Judith Perrignon, the book “A hymn to life”, edited by the Presence, runs through the childhood of Gisèle Pelicot, 73 years old, the marriage of almost five decades with Dominique, the discovery in 2020 that she was drugged and raped by her husband and dozens of men recruited on the Internet, and the trial that in 2024 led to the conviction of 51 defendants.

This figure falls short of the total number of suspects identified by the investigation, which pointed to at least 72 men involved in abuse between 2011 and 2020, although only 51, including Dominique, have been formally accused and tried.

The abuses were recorded, generating about 20,000 photos and videos, presented at the trial, making it one of the most documented and explicit cases of French justice.

Gisèle Pelicot's account in the book is not confined to the years of violence or legal proceedings, going back to childhood in Indre, France, to recall the death of his mother when he was nine years old, and the family life he later built.

With this return to the past, Gisèle Pelicot sought to regain his existence before becoming known worldwide by the so-called Mazan process.

One of the central episodes of the book is the time when, on November 2, 2020, she accompanied her husband to the police station after he was caught filming women under skirts in a supermarket.

It was then that a policeman showed him photographs and videos documenting the abuses he had been victimized.

Gisèle Pelicot writes that she did not recognize the woman she saw in the images, describing herself as “a rag doll” and adding that her “brain stopped working” at that moment, in the police office that showed her the photographs.

The expression would appear again during the trial, when Gisèle Pelicot said, in the face of the images in which she appeared to be raped while unconscious, that she felt “between the garbage and the doll”.

The discovery of these photographs revealed that Dominique Pelicot had drugged her for years with sedatives and anxiolytics and invited other men to sexually abuse her while unconscious.

Gisèle confesses that it took a long time to use the word “violation” to describe what had happened to him.

The book also addresses the shock of discovering that the reality it considered to have lived for decades, including moments it thought happy, coexisted with another reality that it had no knowledge of.

The “dates hurt”, describes Gisèle Pelicot, recalling the reading of the elements of research and how he began to mentally revisit moments of his life in light of what he had discovered in the meantime.

Initially, he did not want the trial to be public, but he would eventually renounce anonymity and demand that the process be carried out from open doors, a decision that allowed the worldwide disclosure of the case and that became one of the marks of his public intervention.

Gisèle explains his decision to refuse the trial behind closed doors, as proposed by the court, with the argument that “shame must change sides”, a phrase that serves as a subtitle to the book.

Pelicot reveals that he did not want to be “refément of their gaze” and considers that a closed trial would be a “present” to the aggressors, that he would be protecting them, because “no one would know” what they had done to him, no journalist could report what had happened, no one could confront the aggressors and no woman could feel less alone when hearing his testimony, because if it had happened to her, it certainly had happened to others.

In this regard, Pelicot explains the relationship between this decision and the contact he made with other women, since during the trial he received thousands of letters and messages of female support.

The reconstruction of his personal life also takes an important place in the narrative.

After the end of his marriage to Dominique Pelicot, Gisèle claims to have fallen in love again with Jean-Loup, a relationship he describes as an important part of his recovery.

At the end of the book, Gisèle Pelicot also reveals that he intends to visit Dominique in prison, despite warnings from people close to him not to do so, because he wants to confront him directly and get answers to questions that remain unanswered, among them he has abused his daughter, Caroline, and if he has committed other crimes.

Gisèle Pelicot writes that he has to go see his ex-husband in prison, ensuring that this is not an act of kindness or display of weakness, but a farewell and a step he considers necessary for his recovery.

The reference to her daughter is a particularly delicate subject, since Caroline Darian, who published her own testimony about her father's crimes in 2025, even questioned whether she had also been drugged and abused by Dominique.

These doubts arose after the police found on her computer images of her daughter sleeping, but Dominique Pelicot denied having violated her.

Gisèle ends the book by stating that, despite everything that happened, he did not lose confidence in people, and that this, which was his “greatest weakness”, is today his “force”.

Dominique Pelicot was sentenced in December 2024 to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence foreseen in France for the crimes in question.

The remaining 50 defendants in the proceedings were also convicted of rape or other sexual crimes, and about two other dozen men captured in the recordings were not identified by the authorities.