Many have advised Gisèle Pelicot against meeting her ex-husband Dominique Pelicot in prison. But she believes he owes her answers.
"I'm going to talk to the person I thought I married. If he's still around, he'll answer. What does he have to lose when he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison anyway?" she writes in her biography "A Tribute to Life," which will be published in 22 languages on Tuesday.
"In any case, I will move forward. The visit will not be a gift, not a weakness, but a farewell, an indispensable step if I am to begin to become whole again."
Friendly and caring
During their 50-year marriage, Gisèle Pelicot always used nicknames for her husband, she writes. When all the horrors came to light, she didn't know how to talk about him. During the trial, she called him Monsieur Pelicot. In the book, she uses his first name, Dominique.
She describes the day he told her that a guard had caught him filming up women's skirts. The police confiscated his cellphone and found photos and videos of her that indicated aggravated rape and involuntary drugging.
When she saw the pictures, she didn't recognize herself at first. The police mentioned the number 53. They said 53 men had come to the couple's home to rape her.
Memory loss
When Gisèle Pelicot left the police station that day, she wanted to forget the last few hours, just as she had been suffering from increasingly frequent memory lapses in recent years. She had also suffered from recurring gynecological problems, but the doctors could not come up with a diagnosis.
Both problems were caused by sleeping pills and muscle relaxants that her husband secretly gave her before the assault.
He explained during questioning that he wanted to "subdue a disobedient woman."
"Right to break up"
Gisèle Pelicot had the right to a trial behind closed doors but decided that the process should be held in public.
The biography, which was praised by reviewers on its release day, has been subtitled "Shame Must Change Side." Gisèle Pelicot has been praised for her courage and has been awarded France's highest civilian award, the Knight of the Legion of Honor, among other things.
But she doesn't recognize herself in the epithet of a feminist icon.
"The media described me as worthy. It was a word that kept coming up when they talked about me. I don't know if that's a good thing. You have the right to break up," she writes.
The case has become known in France as the Affaire des viols de Mazan (Mazan rape case), named after the village where the Pelicot couple lived during the years when the abuses were committed.
Dominique Pelicot has come to be called the "monster from Avignon" (the nearest major city) and one of France's worst sex offenders.
He was discovered quite by accident in 2020, when a security guard saw him using his phone to film up women's skirts at a shopping mall. Police went through Pelicot's phone and other devices, finding tens of thousands of videos and other evidence of abuse that had been going on since 2011.
The videos also allowed over 50 other men, whom Pelicot had contacted via internet forums, to be identified.
Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2025. Another 51 defendants were sentenced to between 3 and 15 years in prison.
