Editor’s Note: This article contains mentions of sexual assault.
Ten.
Ten years of unchecked misogyny. Ten years of injustice. Ten years of horror.
Fifty-one.
Fifty-one perpetrators. 51 men who took everything. One after the other.
Some paid. Some filmed. Some watched.
One.
Gisèle Pelicot.
A survivor of men who enabled her abuse at every turn.
The woman who forced the world to witness the unspeakable crimes committed against her for over a decade.
Fifty-one rapists, yet it took a decade for justice to arrive. A case so monstrous, so dystopian, that it should have shaken the world long ago. But can the weight of 51 men move faster than a society that interrogates victims more than it punishes abusers?
“What time do you usually go to bed? Are you taking any medication—sleeping pills, perhaps? Can you describe a typical evening at home with your husband? Do you ever take afternoon naps?"
These were the probing questions pressed upon Pelicot on the morning of November 2, 2020.
That day, she and her husband were called in for questioning at the police station in the quiet town of Carpentras.
Two months earlier, Gisèle’s husband, Dominique Pelicot, had been caught by a security guard secretly filming under women’s skirts in a supermarket. What first seemed like a disturbing — but isolated — incident soon unravelled into something far more sinister.
On November 2, 2020, police began peeling back the layers of a case that had only just begun to unfold.
Seated across from the officers, Gisèle Pelicot listened as one of them asked, “Do you believe you know your husband well enough to be certain he couldn’t hide anything from you?”
As police dug deeper, they seized Dominique Pelicot’s personal devices: his hard drives, his laptop and his phone. Hundreds of images. Hundreds of videos. Undeniable evidence of her aggressors’ repeated violation; evidence that unraveled the most horrific rape case in modern French history.
Then came the accusation: “I must inform you, Madame Pelicot, that your husband has been taken into custody today for aggravated rape. We suspect that, on multiple occasions, he administered Temesta (a sedative) to you, rendering you unconscious, enabling one or more individuals to engage in sexual acts with you without your knowledge in your own home.”
On November 2, the truth had erupted. Right there, in the police station of Carpentras, the abuse was exposed. Proof was now laid bare; Gisèle was raped by 51 different men.
Proof meticulously recorded, archived and hidden in plain sight. Every file uncovered was a testament to ten years of a woman stripped of consciousness, bodily autonomy and consent. Each one was not just evidence of a crime but of the silence that had allowed it to continue.
The silence of ordinary men. The silence of a firefighter, a nurse and a journalist.
Most were married with children, according to Hugo Décrypte, a French journalist. The very people entrusted with saving lives and informing the public remained complicit in their silence.
In a society that traces its identity back to the Declaration of the Rights of Man, the persistent neglect of sexual violence reveals how the promise of human rights still falls short for women.
Indeed, 270,000 women were victims of physical sexual violence in France in 2023 — rape, attempted rape and sexual assault. Yet only 6% filed a complaint, according to “Personal Experiences and the Aftermath Regarding Security,” an annual report (VRS) produced by the French government.
What does it say about a society when the vast majority of survivors do not feel safe enough to come forward?
These numbers reveal a crisis, but they also expose a pattern. One that dismisses violence to avoid the uncomfortable reality of rape culture. If over 270,000 women experience sexual violence in a single year but only 6% report it, how many Gisèle Pelicots remain unheard?
To understand the weight of that silence in lived experience, I asked a group of women from different walks of life one question: Why do so many Gisèles remain unheard?
Their answers were given anonymously, but they offer a glimpse into the everyday lives of these statistics. These are the voices of women in their late teens to their mid-fifties—women still studying, working and navigating a world that continues to demand their silence.
Together, their words reveal a collective truth society still refuses to face.
“Because we’re taught from the start that our discomfort is less important than someone else’s reputation.”
— 54
“Because shame sticks to the victim, not the rapist. That’s how the system was built. Seamlessly.”
— 27
“Because for every man who rapes, there’s a friend, a colleague, or a boss who knows—and says nothing.”
— 35
“Because they make you believe forgetting is easier than fighting. And honestly? Sometimes it is.”
— 19
The essence of these insights was at the heart of Gisèle’s fight. She could have requested for her trial to be private, a right protected by Article 306 of the French Code of Criminal Procedure. Instead, at 71 years old, she decided to waive her anonymity and publicize the trial. Not only to seek justice for herself but to show other women that they had nothing to be ashamed of.
“I want you to know that we share the same fight,” she declared during her closing statement on the last day of trial. “By opening the doors of this trial on September 2, I wanted society to be able to take hold of the debates that took place.”
On December 19, 2024, the verdict was delivered, and 51 men were found guilty. Standing before a crowd of journalists, Gisèle addressed the world.
“I want you to know that we share the same fight,” she declared. “By opening the doors of this trial on September 2, I wanted society to engage with the debates that took place within these walls. I have never regretted that decision. Now, I have faith in our collective ability to build a future where everyone— women and men—can live in harmony, with respect and mutual understanding.”
Though justice was served, the culture that enabled the abuse persists.
Fifty-one men have been convicted, but the silence that protected them for a decade still endures. As the biggest rape case of French modern history comes to a close, thousands of other survivors continue to face the same barriers to justice.
Gisele’s decision to speak out matters not only because it exposed horrific crimes but because it defied a culture where sexism is worsening – where 37% of women report experiencing non-consensual sex, and 22% of young women aged 18 to 24 have suffered sexual assault or rape.
In a country where 80% of women say they’ve been treated unfairly because of their sex, her courage challenges French society to confront a system that still teaches women to stay silent and doubt their own stories.
But Gisèle Pelicot refuses to let this be the end: “I express neither anger nor hatred. I express my determination to change this society,” she declared on the stand.
“I hear all these women, and men too, who tell me I have courage. It is not courage—it is will.”