Guillaume Horcajuelo/EPA
Gisele Pelicot
A case that shocked France and the rest of the world was remembered in an interview with The Guardian. Gisèle Pelicot remembers how “everything was calculated”.
The French Gisele Pelicot revealed that she intends to visit her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, in prison, possibly later this year, for one last face-to-face conversation.
In an interview with the British newspaper, the victim of what shocked France and the rest of the world explains that she continues to seek answers to the crimes committed over years within her marriage.
“I need answers”said Gisèle, who to this day wonders what led her husband, Dominique, to betray her trust in such a violent and systematic way. And he admits to having tried to understand whether his behavior could be linked to old traumas or lack of psychiatric care. Still, she emphasizes that, in her view, her ex-husband made a conscious choice.
“Why did you betray us like this? Why did you hurt us so much? Why? I don’t have answers. I tried to understand. I thought about whether this was linked to the rapes he may have suffered when he was young, whether he was a ticking time bomb in some way, why he never sought psychiatric help. But still, he chose the depths of the human soul. He made that choice.”
“It was all calculated”: Gisèle recalled the case that shocked the world
The Pelicot case became a landmark, not only because of the seriousness of the facts, but also because of Gisèle Pelicot’s decision to demand that the trial be public.
For almost a decade, Dominique Pelicot, to whom Gisèle was married for 50 years, administered sleeping pills and anxiolytics to his wife, mixed in food and drinks, to leave her sedated. At the same time, she used an online chat room, where she invited men to rape her while she was unconscious, in the couple’s own home.
“I’m looking for a perverted accomplice to abuse my sedated wife”, was one of his messages on the Internet.
“It was like general anesthesia,” says Gisèle about the dark times when she was drugged by her husband. “And all done with medicines that anyone can have at home.”
“I always wear pajamas to bed. And he was able to undress me, dress me the way he wanted, and then put the pajamas back on. Because when I woke up the next morning, I was in my pajamas. I didn’t wake up wearing something else and thinking, ‘Wait a minute, I didn’t look like this last night.’ It was all calculated.”
Dominique, he says, “was loved by everyone, by his children, by his friends, by his family. Nothing disturbed the perfect image. That’s what’s so scary.”
On another occasion, he inexplicably found bleach in a pair of new pants and said, “‘Aren’t you drugging me, by any chance?’ And he started crying, and I was so unsettled by it. I thought, ‘What did I just say to him? And I was the one who apologized. Like many victims, you know, I told myself it was impossible that he was hurting me. I took responsibility.”
Gisèle had to watch the various videos presented in court as evidence. “I walked away from that sedated woman, which is not me. That woman in that bed with all those men, is not me. I think that helped me. Not because I was in denial, but to protect myself.”
New book, new partner
Gisèle is starting an international tour to present the memoir A Hymn to Lifewhich he describes as “a book about hope.” The work revisits his difficult childhood, the beginning of his relationship with Dominique — for whom he “fell in love at first sight” and who today she refers to only as “Mr. Pelicot” — and the path that led her to resist and publicly face the trial.
According to Gisèle, the book is also a reflection on the strength inherited from the women in her family, who overcame several tragedies, and on the “joy of living” that she says she preserved despite suffering.
At 72 years old, Gisèle Pelicot also talks about a new personal chapter. She now has a new home on the French Atlantic coast and a relationship with another man, Jean-Loup, a former Air France flight attendant. A widower, also marked by loss, Jean-Loup appears in Gisèle’s memories as a symbol of a new beginning in life.
