| Gisèle Guillou Pelicot tells her dreadful story of abuse, shame, and justice. It occurred in France, when her husband repeatedly raped her and invited more than 50 other men to do the same. How could that happen? He drugged her. While he did so, her health declined. She had numerous episodes of lost memory and blackouts, even forgetting when she had visited her hairdresser. Was it a medical problem? She thought so. She “spent a decade having endless medical examinations. Blood tests. Scans. Multiple courses of vaginal pessaries. Neurological tests” (p. 48). She was worried that she might die early, as her mother had. The doctors never discovered that she was being poisoned and raped by her own spouse. |
| This book should have told the story of a wonderful 50-year-long marriage, which began when Gisèle and Dominique were young. They produced three children and several grandchildren, and continued through thick and thin, even through fidelity and infidelity. That life ended when a store security guard caught her husband Dominique filming under three women’s skirts. Upskirting. |
| That was just the beginning. The police told Gisèle there were pictures and videos of her rapes by her husband and 53 men. This book tells that grim story. There are films of her being raped by her husband and many other men, yet she has no recollection of it. She had to recognize that the dead-looking woman in the pictures was herself. There were also her husband’s disturbing pictures of their daughter, Caroline, who had to live with the trauma that he might have raped her as well. A sexual abuse charge was filed by her grandson, Nathan, which was later dismissed. Dominique took pictures of his daughters-in-law in the shower. Gisèle was raped while the grandchildren were in adjoining rooms; she slept in until noon because of the drugs. |
| Gisèle gained new perspective from these events. Years earlier, she had abandoned her best friend, who had warned her not to put her husband “on a pedestal, but you have no idea what kind of a person you’re living with” (p. 82). She preferred to lose her friend rather than face the truth that her husband had repeatedly hit on her. The two women reconciled after the abuse proceedings commenced. |
| Gisèle listened to transcripts of many defendants explaining what they had done to her, even though she had no memory of it. “A video shows a stranger raping me in my daughter and son-in-law’s bedroom. I am wearing garters, torn stockings and black lingerie” (p. 130). Her husband “reigned over the night like an animal” (p. 130). Another video showed him raping her in their car. |
| The law addressed this nightmare. Her “body was a piece of evidence. … analysis of [her] hair had revealed traces of drugs despite the fact that [she] had been dyeing it regularly for years. This was evidence of extremely high levels of intoxication” (p. 64). Why so many drugs? “What mattered was that he possessed me” (p. 96) through all of this. |
| Gisèle had to face and ignore the media, who became obsessed with the trial. Imagine sitting through the entire trial, as she decided to do. She saw her rapists. Some of them suggested she had been alert and enjoying their sexual activity. She was suspected of being a willing participant in the whole enterprise. How could a woman doing this be innocent? She was probably drunk, they thought. In court she had to fight the idea that she had been aware of the rapes and enjoyed them. “They were insinuating that I liked it, that I had exhibitionist tendencies, maybe even that I had agreed to be used as bait on the internet” (p. 209). |
| At the end, fifty of the rapists and her husband were behind bars, with another 30 men in the videos they could not identify. That is some record of justice for Gisèle. |
| “Shame has to change sides” (p. 191). That sentence is on the book’s cover as well as in its text. Shame belongs to the defendants, not to Gisèle, as she sometimes felt. She chose an open trial instead of a closed one so that the world could see what had really happened. She received strength from the women who publicly rallied in her support. Their “guard of honour” (p. 206) added to her fortitude. She said it was not only courage that got her through the trial; “this is not courage, but a deep urge and determination to change our patriarchal, sexist society” (p. 214). |
| The book shows how the trials put great pressure on her family, giving her ups and downs in her relationships with her children and grandchildren. She began a new relationship with Jean-Loup, a widower, when she was 70. She won the legal battle, as the rapists were sentenced to prison. But she wants to leave another message, captured by the book’s title, A Hymn to Life. On the book’s cover, one reads “Love is not dead. I am not dead. I still have faith in people. Once, that was my greatest weakness. Now it is my strength.” She keeps her desire to love as an important part of her life. |
| I read this book because I have studied and written about religious sexual abuse for a long time. Moreover, in the United States, the victims of Jeffrey Epstein are always in the news if one pays attention to them and listens to what they say. One of Epstein’s victims says she “was consumed by shame.” They all describe suffering that is unimaginable. We get a sense of the horror through Gisèle’s terrifying story. They keep telling us that they have repeatedly reported their horrors of abuse, but the men in charge refuse to listen as they keep their own power in place while ignoring their own shame in the abuse. |
| With Gisèle, I challenge our “patriarchal, sexist society” (p. 214), which has long protected presidents, politicians, lawyers, bankers, university personnel, and clergy, while the women weep their stories and try to explain just how much they have suffered. |
| Can shame change sides so that we can get justice for them, as the French courts gave Gisèle? I hope so. |
Have friends who like law? Forward this email. 
Like Verdict for legal discussions on Facebook. 
Follow @verdictjustia for news and updates on Twitter. 
