'Hell and back': mass rape survivor Gisele Pelicot recounts her ordeal in memoir

She says global letters from women gave her strength

A customer holds a copy of the book "Et la joie de vivre" (A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides) by French mass rape survivor Gisele Pelicot, a book written with journalist and novelist Judith Perrignon, in the Les Getteurs de vents bookstore in Paris, France, Feb 17, 2026. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier

Gisele Pelicot, the French woman whose husband was convicted of inviting dozens of men to rape her unconscious body, has released her memoir, recounting the horrors she endured and why she chose to go public in a trial that shocked the world.

"A Hymn to Life", published on Tuesday, retraces the 2024 mass-rape case that turned Pelicot, 73, into a global symbol in the fight against sexual violence – and which spurred France to revamp its rape law.

Explaining her decision to waive her right to anonymity, she wrote: "No one would ever know what they had done to me... No one beyond those involved in the trial would see their faces, look them up and down and wonder how to pick out the rapists among their neighbours and colleagues."

'HELL AND BACK'

Describing the moment she learnt her husband had drugged and raped her for years, she wrote that police had initially asked if she and her then-husband were swingers. When she had replied that they weren't, she was shown images of herself, unconscious in bed with unknown men.

"The officer says a number. He tells me fifty-three men had come to my house to rape me," the memoir reads.

She then recounts how she went home and hung out her husband's washing. "I was like a dog waiting by the garden gate for its master," she wrote.

She also describes the difficult task of telling friends and, especially, her children, and how she was aware that her daughter Caroline was about to "go through hell and back."

In addition to her now ex-husband Dominique Pelicot, 50 men were convicted of raping Gisele Pelicot.

'FAITH IN PEOPLE ... IS MY REVENGE'

During the trial, Gisele Pelicot never directly addressed Dominique Pelicot but she wrote that she planned to visit him in prison to seek answers.

"Did you ever think, 'I must stop'? Did you abuse our daughter? Did you commit the most abject crime of all? Do you have any idea of the hell we're living in? ... Did you kill? ... I'll ask him all these questions. I need answers; he owes me that much."

Pelicot says she has drawn strength from the thousands of letters she has received from women around the world and from the women waiting outside the courtroom.

"Not long after the trial began, I started to be presented with a bundle of correspondence at the end of each day ... I preferred to read their letters rather than the newspapers; they gave me the chance to listen to women's voices," she wrote.

"How could I tell the women ... that their presence outside the courtroom eased for me what was happening inside."

In her book, Pelicot also describes how she found love again with a man she met through mutual friends.

The evening she met him, she recalled in the book she "was light-headed with happiness."

"I needed to love again. I wasn't afraid. ... I still have faith in people. Once, that was my greatest weakness. Now it is my strength. My revenge."