An interview with Gisèle Pelicot is difficult to judge by the usual television criteria. First, the easy part: Victoria Derbyshire is the ideal interlocutor.
The Newsnight co-presenter brings a strong, restrained warmth that naturally matches Ms Pelicot's innate dignity, as the two walk relentlessly through a horror story.
Her “descent into hell” began on November 2, 2020, when local police summoned her and her husband, Dominique Pelicot, to the police station. They thought it was about his recent arrest, after he was caught secretly taking pictures up women’s skirts in a supermarket. But the investigation had uncovered something much more serious: thousands of videos and photos, collected over a decade, were found on his laptop, showing his unconscious wife being raped by unknown men.
The police showed her several images. She barely recognized herself, wearing underwear that didn’t belong to her, and she didn’t recognize any of the men. “Something exploded inside me,” she tells Derbyshire. Only hours later, at home, did she name what she had seen: “Dominique raped me and made me rape myself.” At least 70 men were involved. They were recruited, Derbyshire explains in the program’s introduction, from a radius of about 30 kilometers from their home in Mazan, a small Provençal town. Fifty-two men – including her husband – were identified by police; after a three-month trial, most were convicted of aggravated rape. Dominique Pelicot received the maximum sentence of 20 years.
Derbyshire’s questions are not harsh, but they are direct – and that is the only approach worthy of a woman who has demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to survive unimaginable trauma. Pelicot publicly waived her anonymity on the grounds that “the shame must change sides”: it belongs to the abusers, not the victim. She is often said to have become a feminist icon; indeed, she has become a source of hope and inspiration for women around the world, including victims who have yet to come forward. According to the Office for National Statistics, in March 2025, 98% of victims reported that their attacker was male.
It’s telling to hear how her stance on anonymity evolved. Initially, she wanted a closed-door trial. “I didn’t want to be seen,” she says, describing the feeling of “a dirty stain that follows you your whole life.” But the four years between the discovery of the abuse and the trial gave her time to reflect. She concluded that this internalized shame “punishes victims twice.” If she could overcome it, she believed others could too: “They shouldn’t lose faith.”
Sitting quietly, with admirable composure – even when she gets emotional – Pelicot explains how her husband mixed tranquilizers with muscle relaxants so that her body would not react and she would not suspect the violence the next day. Her figure commands respect. One can only admire her strength and charm and hope that she maintains a close relationship with her daughter, Caroline, who is also suspected of being a victim.
However, behind every consideration of this issue lies a disturbing question: how many people are following this story not only with horror, but also with a kind of dark fascination? How many men can think “I would like to…”? Is this a morbid or realistic question? Other recent cases show that the danger is not abstract. And when you think about the “30-kilometer radius” around you, the question becomes even harder to avoid. /GazetaExpress/
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