Sucked into darkness: Gisèle Pelicot tells her story

Franklin Nelson
05 March 2026, The Tablet

Never shame: Gisèle Pelicot

ALAMY/AP, LEWIS JOLY

On 2 November 2020, Gisèle Pelicot accompanied her husband to the local police station in the south of France. Dominique Pelicot, or “Doumé”, as his wife called him affectionately, had been summoned after being caught by a supermarket security guard two months earlier filming under three women’s skirts. On being asked by an officer to step into a room by herself, Pelicot “immediately apologised profusely for what [her] husband had done”, she recalls in A Hymn to Life. Soon, after being shown disturbing photographs, she understood that his crimes were far graver and closer to home.

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