A Hymn to Life
By Gisèle Pelicot
London, Penguin Random House. 2026
Gisèle Pelicot was secretly drugged, sexually assaulted and raped by her husband Dominique Pelicot and 50 other men he solicited into their home in Mazan, France, over a 10-year period.
When Dominique was arrested and brought to trial for his crimes in 2024, the case generated a wave of support for Gisèle. She was named the “most noteworthy person of 2024” in a French opinion poll, eclipsing world leaders. She was honoured by Time magazine and named the “most influential woman of 2025” by the Independent, to mark International Women’s Day.
Gisèle was awarded the Legion d’Honneur — France’s highest civic honour — in July last year for her immense courage and dignity, and for waving her right to anonymity during her 2024 trial, which brought global attention to issues of sexual abuse and consent.
Gisèle’s case contributed to a national debate on sexual violence in France, which led to a change in the legal definition of rape.
In A Hymn to Life, Gisèle describes the day in November 2020, when her husband was arrested for aggravated rape and for administering toxic substances. It was also the day that police told her what he had been doing to her for about a decade.
Dominique’s phone and computer had been confiscated after he had been caught filming under women’s skirts in their local supermarket. Police also found many videos he had taken of the rapes committed against Gisèle.
The couple’s 50th wedding anniversary was just around the corner and the book describes the devastation she and her three children experienced following the revelations.
Not long after the videos came to light, intimate and suspicious photos taken by Dominique of her daughter and two daughters-in-law were also found. The family was then informed that he was being investigated for the 1991 drugging, rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman. (Dominique had confessed to a similar crime from 1999. Luckily, that young woman escaped.)
At a time when many use the term “the Epstein class” to describe a network of ultra-wealthy, powerful individuals — including billionaires and politicians — as perpetrators of sexual violence against women, this book is a reminder that sexist and oppressive attitudes and behaviours towards women are not restricted to that class.
The 50 accused men included truck drivers, car mechanics, construction workers, firefighters, a nurse, a hairdresser and an IT specialist. At the conclusion of the trial, they were found guilty of rape or attempted rape and aggravated sexual assault.
Like many survivors of sexual violence, Gisèle was subjected during the trial to innuendos that she had willingly participated. The court case exposed appalling, misogynistic attitudes, including from a judge who referred to the rapes as “sex scenes”.
Patriarchal attitudes were exhibited during the trial, including by some female partners or relatives of the accused.
The defence lawyers attacked her credibility, one saying, “There’s rape and there’s rape”, and another, “you asked for it, Madame Pelicot!”. The rapists called her a liar.
One of the accused — a 26-year-old soldier — raped Gisèle twice, missing the birth of his premature daughter on the night of the first rape. According to the book, he said he did not know what consent was and only learned about it in prison.
Another one of those convicted, who had raped Gisèle on six occasions, did not use a condom even though he was HIV-positive (Gisèle was not infected). He told the court that a husband’s consent was “enough”.
The book unmasks the horrific patriarchal attitudes and oppression that still exist, and demonstrates the willingness of many women to challenge it, reinforcing the strength of women standing together.
As Gisèle writes, “I can’t remember the day I first heard the applause as I walked into the Palais de Justice” (where the trial took place in Paris). “I realised that the people around me, mostly women, were forming a guard of honour, something I had never imagined or expected.”
This, I believe is a result of the impact of the 1970s’ women’s liberation movement.
Gisèle continues: “How could I tell the women waiting to thank me for my courage — when I had no claim to any such thing — that their presence outside the courtroom eased for me what was happening inside, that the long-buried stories they came to lay on the steps were the best possible response to the denial and bravado of the men flexing their muscles inside?”
The slogan, “shame has to change sides”, which Gisèle remembered being used by feminists a decade earlier, boosted her confidence. She writes that despite this being a traumatic period in her life, it was also a time of growing confidence and realisation of her own strength.