Gisèle Pelicot shares strange signs she remembers before realizing husband drugged and raped her along with 50 other men
Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years behind bars in 2024
Warning: This article contains discussion of sexual assault and rape which some readers may find distressing.
Gisèle Pelicot has detailed some of the warning signs she questioned during the years of abuse she suffered at the hands of Dominique Pelicot.
Between the years of 2011 and 2020, Gisèle's husband of more than 30 years drugged and sexually abused her, and also invited over 50 other men to rape her while she was asleep.
After being arrested for filming up women's skirts in a supermarket in 2020, the full extent of Pelicot's sickening crimes was revealed when a police investigation found thousands of images and videos which he'd documented during these sickening acts on his computer.
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Gisèle was unaware of the abuse she had suffered until her husband was detained following the supermarket incident, and when the case was taken to court, bravely decided to waive her right to anonymity so society could see what was happening'.
In December 2024, Pelicot was found guilty of aggravated rape, while he was also charged with attempted aggravated rape, and taking indecent images of his daughter, Caroline, and his daughters-in-law.
He was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Ahead of the release of her new memoir, 'A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides', Gisèle sat down with France 5 for her first televised interview since the trial, where she detailed some of the warning signs regarding her husband.
Soon after the pair moved to Mazan, a small village in Southern France, the now 73-year-old noticed a yellow stain on a pair of her trousers, which made her question whether her husband could be drugging her.
"I asked him whether he might be drugging me, and then he started crying. Was it my subconscious? I don’t know," the mother-of-three recalled.
She also recalled an incident in which a beer she was enjoying seemed to change colour, leading Pelot to claim he had added mint syrup.
"At the time I didn’t think anything of it," she added.
Gisèle went on to say Pelicot tipped the drink down the sink after she questioned it.
In an interview with The New York Times, she also detailed the moment she'd discovered the abuse that she'd unknowingly endured when speaking to the detective and noticing 'a pile of files next to his desk'.
The Guardian reported at the time of Pelicot's trial that at least 83 men are believed to have raped Gisèle, though it was 51 men, including Pelicot, who were convicted.
All but one of the 50 co-defendants were charged with rape.
If you've been affected by any of the issues in this article, you can contact The National Sexual Assault Hotline on 800.656.HOPE (4673), available 24/7. Or you can chat online via online.rainn.org.
Topics: Domestic Abuse, True crime, France, Gisele Pelicot
Callum Jones