PARIS — Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir was launched Tuesday in 22 languages worldwide, sharing details of the horror she went via and sending a strong message of hope and assist to victims of sexual abuse.
“I wished my story to assist others,” Pelicot informed French nationwide channel France 5 final week forward of the discharge of her guide, “A Hymn to Life, Disgrace has to Change Sides.”
Pelicot recounted her story of survival within the guide and in her first sequence of interviews because the landmark 2024 trial that turned her into a worldwide icon against sexual violence and imprisoned her husband who knocked her out with medicine so different males might assault her inert physique.
“As we speak I’m doing higher, and this guide allowed me to have interaction in self-reflection, to take inventory of my life,” she stated. “I needed to attempt to rebuild myself on this subject of ruins. As we speak I’m a girl standing sturdy.”
Pelicot stated her guide is supposed to ship “a message of hope to all the ladies who’re going via a really sophisticated interval of their lives.”
The surprising case — and Pelicot’s choice to waive her anonymity and communicate publicly — prompted a reckoning over rape tradition in France and past, as her dignity and power impressed many internationally.
Gymnastic celebrity and Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles, herself a survivor of sexual abuse, paid tribute to Pelicot in a message broadcast by the BBC.
“Gisèle has demonstrated to the world that it’s not for victims of sexual abuse to really feel disgrace — it’s the perpetrators,” Biles stated. “By waiving her anonymity and refusing to really feel disgrace, Gisèle paves the way in which for different victims to return ahead.”
In December 2024, Pelicot’s ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, and 50 different males have been convicted of sexually assaulting her between 2011 and 2020 whereas she was beneath chemical submission. Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to twenty years in jail, whereas the opposite defendants acquired sentences starting from three to fifteen years. An appeals court docket later elevated to 10 years the sentence of the one defendant who challenged his conviction.
Dominique Pelicot, whom Gisèle Pelicot had been married to for practically 50 years, acknowledged that for years he blended sedatives into her foods and drinks so he might rape her and invite different males to do the identical.
The unprecedented trial uncovered how on-line pornography, chat rooms and distorted notions of consent can gas sexual violence.
In October, France handed a legislation defining rape and different sexual assault as any non-consensual sexual act within the wake of the Pelicot case, becoming a member of many different European nations which have comparable consent-based legal guidelines, together with neighboring Germany, Belgium and Spain. Till then, rape beneath French legislation was outlined as penetration or oral intercourse utilizing “violence, coercion, risk or shock.”
