Gisele Pelicot recalls moment she told her children about ex-husband’s heinous crimes
Gisele Pelicot has said her daughter let out an ‘inhuman’ scream after she told her about the sexual violence she suffered at the hands of her ex-husband.
The 73-year-old spoke of the harrowing moment she had to tell her three children, David, Caroline and Florian, of their father, Dominque Pelicot’s unspeakable crimes.
He was found guilty in 2024 of repeatedly drugging and raping his wife for almost a decade, and inviting dozens of strangers to rape her.
Gisele, who is releasing her memoirs soon, remembers the moments she made three separate phone calls to each of her children, which she described as the hardest thing she has ever had to do.
‘I was well aware that for my children it was going to be immensely difficult,’ she told BBC Newsnight.
Speaking of her children’s reaction, she recalls the moment her daughter Caroline screamed in shock at her father’s actions toward her mother.
‘I heard my daughter scream. It was almost inhuman, that scream,’ she said.
She described her eldest child, David, as being in a state of shock, while Florian, the youngest, immediately checked in on his mother’s wellbeing asking her how she was.
She added in her interview with the BBC: ‘They realised I was alone, and that I might do something stupid. For them, too, it was like an explosion.’
A day after those phone calls, her children travelled to be with her in Mazan.
Gisele watched as her children destroyed or threw out any belongings, photos or furniture relating to their father, in an attempt to erase him from their lives.
‘I told myself that my life was in ruins, that I had nothing left apart from my children,’ she said.
Her remarks come just days after her television interview, since exposing the sexual violence carried out by her ex-husband and dozens of other men.
Despite not speaking to her husband in court, Pelicot says she has one thing she still wants to do for closure.
She said: ‘I want to look him directly in the eye and ask him, ‘Why did you do that?’’
Gisele also recounted how she froze when a detective sat her down and first showed her images of herself, unconscious, being assaulted.
‘I don’t recognise myself in those photos. I said, ‘That’s not me.’ Then I put on my glasses, and there I discovered this lifeless woman with a man she didn’t know on her bed.
‘I think my brain disassociated.’
Until police knocked on her door four years ago, exposing the crimes, she lived a normal life as a wife, mother, and grandmother.
Under French law, the names of victims are normally kept out of the press, but she insisted on a public trial in an attempt to expose her ex and the 50 men that he is accused of inviting to rape her.
She allowed journalists to publish her full name, and the court to exhibit explicit videos recorded by her husband showing men engaging in sexual intercourse with her while unconscious.
Gisele has said her decisions were in solidarity with all the other women who go unrecognised as victims of sexual crimes.
‘I have decided not to be ashamed, I have done nothing wrong,’ she previously told the court. ‘They are the ones who must be ashamed.
‘I’m not expressing hatred or hate, but I am determined that things change in this society.’
Her ex-husband recruited men online, on the now-defunct website called Coco, and began private chats with potential recruits, telling them he was ‘looking for someone to abuse my sleeping, drugged wife’.
To keep her unconscious, he crushed sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication into her food and drinks.
The horror of this case is not simply that Pelicot, in his own words, arranged for men to rape his wife; it is that he also had no difficulty finding dozens of them to take part.
Aged between 26 and 74, they included a nurse, a journalist, a prison warden, a local councillor, a soldier, lorry drivers, and farm workers.
Almost two years on from her ex-husband’s conviction, Gisele revealed she has met a man – after never thinking she would fall in love again.
‘Meeting him was incredible. I met this man who’s also been through difficult times, and it’s changed our lives,’ she said.
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