Ep. 100 - 103 | Gisèle Pelicot

Written By Kelsey Mutch

For nearly fifty years, Gisèle Pelicot believed she was living an ordinary life — a long marriage, grown children, grandchildren, and a quiet retirement in the south of France. But in 2020, a police investigation revealed a truth so unimaginable it would shock the world.

For almost a decade, her husband had been secretly drugging her with powerful sedatives, leaving her unconscious night after night. While she slept, he raped her — and invited dozens of strangers into their home to do the same.

Doctors had spent years searching for explanations for her memory loss, exhaustion, and mysterious illnesses, never realizing the symptoms were not medical at all. They were evidence of a crime happening in plain sight.

By the time authorities uncovered the truth, investigators had identified more than seventy men connected to the assaults and documented years of abuse carefully recorded by the man she trusted most, her husband Dominique, to whom she had been married for almost half a century.

This is a story of betrayal, survival, resilience and the case that forced an entire country to confront the reality of hidden violence. This is the story of a woman refusing to stay silent, a woman determined to make shame change sides.

SOURCES (Some were translated using an in-browser translation extension):

Kelsey Mutch
Next

Ep. 098 - 099 | Boston’s Pedophile Priests