In this forceful and lucid memoir the author details the impact of her father’s crimes on the family and her decision to never forgive or forget

“I was sacrificed on the altar of vice,” said Gisèle Pelicot in her opening testimony of a trial that shook France and the world between September and December 2024. Waiving her right to anonymity, the 72-year-old made her ordeal public so that, in her words, “shame must change sides”. For nearly 10 years, her husband of 50 years Dominique had invited dozens of men via an online site (now closed) to rape her while she lay comatose in bed in their home near Avignon. Each time, he had sedated her with a mix of anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills slipped into her food and glasses of wine. He filmed the rapes and stored the videos neatly in his computer under the title “abuse”.

Dominique Pelicot may never have been arrested had it not been for the perseverance of supermarket security guards who noticed him making upskirt videos of female shoppers. They convinced three of them to file a complaint to the police in September 2020. A young police officer then seized Pelicot’s computer and electronic equipment to investigate further. Police technicians unearthed more than 20,000 pornographic videos and pictures documenting his crimes against his wife. In just a few weeks, the police established that Gisèle Pelicot had been raped at least 200 times, the equivalent of once a fortnight for almost 10 years. Convinced that she was in mortal danger because of the repeated sedation, they worked night and day until they could gather enough evidence and arrest Dominique Pelicot. On 2 November 2020, Gisèle accompanied her husband to the police station in Carpentras, near where they lived. He had admitted to upskirting and had cried for her forgiveness. While police officers dealt with her husband (he would never walk free again), Gisèle Pelicot was invited into a room by the young investigative officer, who started revealing the torture she had endured unknowingly. She now understood why she had suffered from severe memory losses, fainting and gynaecological problemss. She did not have Alzheimer’s, as she had feared.