Gisèle Pelicot: Shame must be carried by the accused, not the victims

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0:30Find out more at polandyourplacetogrow.com. America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere. I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

1:06Hello, I'm BBC presenter Victoria Derbyshire and this is The Interview from the BBC World Service. The best conversations coming out of the BBC. People shaping our world from all over the world. Before we begin, I wanted to let you know that you might find some of the details of rape and abuse in this story really upsetting. If you're not a little bit afraid, then you're not paying attention. We have never seen a people so united. Do not make that boat crossing. Do not make that journey. Being born in America, feeling American, having people treat me like I'm not. We're more popular than populism.

1:45For this interview, I met Giselle Pellico, the woman at the centre of the largest rape trial in French history. In 2024, 51 men, including her husband, were convicted of raping her over almost a decade. Her then-husband, Dominique Pellico, used to drug her frequently before raping her himself and bringing other men into the family home to rape her too. He filmed the abuse and thousands of videos were found by police on his laptop. Giselle Pellico made the remarkable decision to waive her legal right to anonymity just before the trial began because, she said, she wanted shame to change sides from the victim to the rapist.

2:31Speaking publicly for the first time, Giselle Pellicot tells me about the impact on her of what her husband did and how she survived. She also has the most incredible message of hope, and she tells us about finding love.

2:48I've always been focused on other people, on the future. I didn't think at all about falling in love or even wanting to. but life put a man in my path who has the same values, the same principles as me and who's also been through many ordeals in his life and we had this stroke of luck. We fell in love like teenagers when neither of us was expecting it. So you see, life always holds beautiful surprises. It's brought a lot of colour into our lives.

3:20Welcome to The Interview from the BBC World Service with Giselle Pellico. Can I take you to the autumn of 2020 when your life as you knew it changed forever? Your husband was arrested for the crime of filming underneath the clothes of three women in a supermarket. He told you what he had been caught doing and that he'd had his phone and computer seized. How did you react to that?

3:53I saw that he had changed, so I asked him if everything was all right. And this is when he admitted that he'd done something stupid, that he'd taken upskirt pictures of two or three women. Then he started crying and told me he didn't want to lose me. I think the fear of losing me has always obsessed him. He promised that he'd learned his lesson and that he would not do it again, so I told him that I would keep it a secret. I wouldn't tell my children. But there would be no next time because then I'd leave. And on the 2nd of November, I discovered the extent of what he'd done to me over 10 years.

4:26And it was at the police station that you discovered what had happened. An officer requested that both of you come to the station. He talked to you and your husband separately and asked you questions like what your husband's character was like, what was a typical evening, if you like to entertain, if you were into swinging. He then informed you that your husband had been taken into custody for aggravated rape and drugging you. He said he was going to show you some photos that you wouldn't like. Can I ask, Madame Pellica, what you saw when you looked at those images?

5:07I see two or three photos, but I don't recognise myself in them. This woman is lying on the bed as if she were dead. There were men next to her. I don't understand who they are. I don't know them. I've never met them. And then something explodes inside me. I was in such a state. It was like a tsunami. It took me a while to realize what had happened. I think I only started to understand once I'd got home. When I called my friend, they'd asked me not to be alone. I told her, Dominique is in custody because he raped me and had me raped. That's when I used the word rape. It was after five hours of questioning.

5:43that I put words to Monsieur Pellicot's crime. It was the officer who had said to you, 53 men came to your home and raped you. That moment, it must have been devastating. It must have been as though you're plunged into a parallel universe, perhaps.

6:08He gave me the figure of 53, but they later found that there were many more who hadn't been arrested. There are 20 or 30 men still out there walking free. So I didn't understand what was going on. I told myself that it was inconceivable that this man who shared my life could have committed these horrors. I told myself that my life was in ruins, that I had nothing left apart from my children. They came the next day. It was a descent into hell for me but also for them. Our family was totally destroyed. We were crushed by the horror.

6:46What Dominique Pellico did has had a devastating impact on your whole family. The police found two photos of your daughter Caroline on his computer, asleep in bed, taken by him. Caroline believes her father abused her. He said he hasn't. Can I ask what you believe?

7:13What Caroline is going through is extremely painful, and I am devastated by her suffering. There's the incestuous way he looks at his daughter, of course, which is deeply troubling, and there's also this doubt that condemns her to perpetual torment. She filed a complaint against her father. I hope she gets answers. For now, I support her. We've reconnected recently. She called me just before Christmas, but for my daughter, it's a descent into hell as well. And it put a main strain on your relationship between you and your daughter. Can I ask how you are?

7:50It's wrong to think that such a tragedy brings a family together. It took us a long time to rebuild ourselves. Everyone rebuilds as best they can. It took Caroline time because she's filled with hatred and anger, feelings I don't have. I have neither hatred nor anger. I felt betrayed and outraged by Monsieur Pellicot, but that's just how I am, that's how my DNA works. Caroline is different, and it's true that each of us needed time to find our own path. Today, we're trying to bring each other peace, and I hope we're on the right road to healing, all of us together. You were actually angry with yourself that you hadn't noticed anything in the nine years, at least, that he was drugging you with his own anxiety and insomnia medication.

8:37poisoning your glass of wine or your food in the evening. Why were you angry with yourself? Because I didn't realise anything. I saw nothing. I think it was right at the beginning when he started drugging me, in fact. I didn't remember what I'd done the day before, so I said to him, you're not drugging me by any chance. And when I saw him break down in tears, I immediately thought there might be something wrong because I have an excellent memory. I really remember a lot of things. And there I couldn't remember at all what I'd done the day before. What you also didn't know at the time is that as well as drugging you, he was giving you a very powerful muscle relaxant so that your body would slacken and dilate, which is why you believe you never felt pain the day after being raped by him and other men.

9:33This question was put to me in court by the defence lawyers, especially the women. They said, how is it that you had no problems, no pain and so on? But it turned out that he was putting muscle relaxants in the drugs. I think that if he hadn't used them the next day, I would have been in agony. It's true, when you see what they did to me, the images in those videos are truly unbearable. I was truly sacrificed on the altar of vice. I was a martyred woman, thrown as prey to all these individuals. To think that one of them was HIV positive, it was sheer luck that I didn't contract the virus. Because of that, too, I feel that someone up there protected me, because I really am a survivor.

10:17You write, he had wanted to force an insubmissive woman into submission. In the end, you say you were punished for saying no to his fantasies. Is that an explanation for what he did?

10:36I think so, because he would have liked me to participate in swinging sessions, and I always refused because I had a sense of modesty. Going to that kind of club was out of the question. So I think he found a way around it by subduing me. That's what he said. I subdued an unbreakable woman. because in my marriage, I wasn't a taller submissive woman. I always worked, he always shared the housework. We were always quite a modern couple, even though we got married in the 1970s. I think he'd found his way around it and he satisfied his fantasies by subduing me chemically. You made the remarkable decision to let the world know who you are, to waive your legal right to anonymity, which meant the trial of all these men would be opened up to the public and the media and everyone would know who you were.

11:27Why did you choose to do that?

11:33When I decided against a closed hearing, I wanted the shame to shift to the other side. I'd carried that shame for more than four years. That self-inflicted pain I felt meant victims were being punished twice and I thought that if I was able to overcome it, all victims could do it too. I'm sure of it. They must not lose confidence. They must dare to choose a public trial. It's very important. It's also a path to self-recovery. Shame must be carried by the accused, not the victims. You had never watched the videos Dominique Pellico had recorded of you, plunged into this deep sleep and being raped.

12:12You felt that seeing them would be like being raped all over again. When you did watch them, can I ask, what did you see?

12:26I saw crime scenes, terrible scenes, and you wonder how a human being is capable of doing that. When you see this lifeless body on a bed, you wonder how a man can rape a sedated woman. Where's the pleasure? I didn't understand it. I watched them once, that was enough for me. During the trial, I didn't look at them. I could hear myself snoring. That was unbearable for me. But there aren't really any words to describe what I saw. For me, they were animals. They weren't human. How did you feel about the prospect of the court and the world's media viewing them?

13:06I'd prepared myself for that. That's why it took me so long to make this decision, because, as I said, I felt so much shame about what had been done to me, and I think most victims... Pardon, you were ashamed? You were ashamed? I was before I made the decision, before I rejected the offer of a closed hearing, of course I felt ashamed. I absolutely didn't want to be seen and I think all victims feel shame at having been raped. This filthy stain stays with you for life, really. I couldn't bear the thought of being seen that way. I want to ask you about a couple of other elements of the trial. the initial decision of the presiding judge, who ruled that journalists and members of the public wouldn't be allowed to see the videos Dominique Pellico had filmed of you being raped for reasons of decency.

13:57And defence lawyers didn't want the word rape to be used in order to preserve the presumption of innocence of their clients. One defence lawyer suggested sexual relations. The judge suggested sex scenes.

14:16Yes, I fought hard when I gave evidence at the bar because I said at one point, I don't want to hear any more talk of sex scenes. These are rape scenes. The scenes that were shown had been sanitised. They were no sex scenes. Sex scenes mean consent. Rape scenes are something entirely different. They're crime scenes.

14:38You're listening to The Interview from the BBC World Service.

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16:32The court found 47 of the men guilty of rape, too guilty of attempted rape, too guilty of sexual assault. You mentioned earlier, there are some men, dozens of them, who couldn't be identified from the videos, who are walking free. They could be drugging and raping other women now. It's terrifying to think that they're out there. They're probably married, fathers too and they could do it again. During the investigation into what Dominique Pellico had subjected you to, police discovered he had tried to rape a 20-year-old woman, an estate agent, back in 1999 and he eventually admitted to that. He was also questioned about the murder of a young woman in 1991, a 23-year-old estate agent called Sophie Naam, who was drugged, raped, strangled and stabbed to death while she was showing a client around an apartment.

17:33Do you believe your former husband could have killed her? Today, Monsieur Pellicot is under formal investigation for this crime. He's presumed innocent. I dared to hope that he was not the perpetrator of this heinous crime because otherwise it would once again be a descent into hell, both for me and for his children. For the attempted rape, he was identified because his DNA was a match. I think a great deal about these two families. I think about Sophie Naum's family because I believe her mum has been waiting for the perpetrator of this crime for years. I don't know how that woman could possibly rebuild herself.

18:12She doesn't know who the culprit is. And as for the young woman we call Marion, the attempted rape, it's the same. Today she's the same age as my daughter because it's worth knowing that when he did that, she was the same age as my daughter at that time, meaning Caroline was 20 in 1999, like that young woman. It was very challenging for me when they called me in 2022, November 2022, to explain all this to me. I didn't quite understand what they were telling me. That too was a descent into hell for me. I had tried to keep my head above water and once again, I was told that Monsieur Pellicot had been placed under investigation.

18:51So it's difficult, both for me and for his children, to this day. And I don't know whether there'll be a trial concerning this young woman. I hope there will be, for her sake, so that she can begin to heal. Monsieur Pellico was given the maximum jail sentence for what he did to you and for bringing men into your home and your daughter's home to rape you. 20 years in jail. Will you ever see him again?

19:22I haven't had the opportunity to go and see him, and I hope to do so. That's also part of my way of rebuilding myself. I wasn't able to speak directly with Monsieur Pellicot during the whole trial. I always address the presiding judge, so I think I need to go and see him to get answers. I don't know if I'll get them, but face to face, I hope he'll be able to give me the answers I'm still seeking, particularly about his daughter and about the cold cases. So you will go and see him in prison and ask him the questions that you want to ask? Yes, I hope to do that. There has been an outpouring of support for you from people around the world.

20:03Let's talk more about those people, particularly women, who began to wait for you each day at the court and formed a guard of honour as you walked into the building and then applauded you as you left the building. How did that make you feel? Their presence outside brought calm in the face of what was happening inside the courtroom. They gave me incredible strength and I think my story echoed their suffering. They identified with my story. The women I met were often victims who'd never dared to file a complaint and quite a few told me they would now have the strength to do so. And you wrote that the crowd saved you?

20:52Yes, you go through hell in a courtroom. You're really humiliated. Nothing has changed much, in fact. Victims are still made to feel like the guilty party. So yes, when I came out, the applause gave me enormous strength. And seeing my name plastered on the walls of Avignon, this name as a banner, my story as an example, it gave me a lot of strength. Alone, it would have been very difficult, I think. What do you want to say to victims of sexual violence around the world? They should never feel ashamed. They're not guilty of anything. It's very important to say that they too can do what I was able to do.

21:33I'm convinced of that. You say you have found love again. Some people may be surprised by that.

21:44I've always been focused on other people, on the future. I didn't think at all about falling in love or even wanting to. But life put a man in my path who has the same values, the same principles as me, and who's also been through many ordeals in his life. And we had this stroke of luck. We fell in love like teenagers when neither of us was expecting it. So you see, life always holds beautiful surprises. It's brought a lot of colour into our lives. We have a lot of colors in our lives too. Madame Pellica, we wanted to show you these women who we spoke to from across France who wanted to give you this message.

22:23What I would like to say to Gisèle Pellicaud is thank you for being beaten. Thank you for being so courageous. Thank you for talking very high and strong about this tragedy. Thank you for everything you have done for women in France, for justice to advance and for women in the whole world. Thank you for having me so much. And hearing their voices, seeing their faces, makes you emotional.

22:49It touches me enormously because these are the faces I met during the trial. I saw them putting up posters, I saw their collages, I saw the banners that read, Giselle, a rape is a rape. They were truly exceptional. I'm not a radical feminist, but I am a feminist in my own way. And Madame Pelico, if I may, I feel like you are one of the strongest women I have ever met. There is a life force in you. Where does that strength come from? I think it's in my DNA. I was born like this because I experienced strategies very young, through my grandmother, through my mother. And I always saw these women smiling despite everything they'd gone through.