Paris
—
Gisele Perico emerged as a global feminist hero in 2024 by turning her horrifying personal story into a public fight against rape culture.
On December 19, 2024, her ex-husband Dominique Pericot was found guilty of orchestrating dozens of rapes by different men over nearly a decade, following a trial that shocked France and forced the country to investigate systematic sexual assault. That day, 50 men were convicted of rape or sexual assault.
Gisele Perico gives her first TV interview
“Shame has to take a turn,” Perico said outside the courtroom in the south of France where the rapist was convicted and sentenced. This became a rallying cry that helped change the narrative around sexual violence in France and abroad.
With her new memoir, Hymn to Life: Shame Must Turn a Stand, set to be released next week, Perricot, 73, is speaking out and revealing what she has so far only shared in court. On Wednesday, she gave her first television interview since the trial on public broadcaster France 5.
Here are the main points.
Ms Perricotte described her shock when a police officer called her in and made bombshell statements that her husband of 50 years had been putting sleeping pills in her food and drinks and inviting strangers to rape her while recording the assault.
“I didn’t realize I was in those pictures. I said, ‘That’s not me,'” she said of the images investigators showed her. “Then I put on my glasses and there I found this lifeless woman in bed with a man I didn’t know. I think my brain had dissociated.”
Pericot said looking back, there were warning signs, but she didn’t allow herself to confront them at the time.
She remembers noticing yellow stains on her pants soon after she moved to the village of Mazan in the south of France with Dominique Pericot. “When I asked him if he was drugging me, he started crying.
Was it my subconscious? I don’t know. ”
In another incident, white beer appeared to change color after Dominic Perico added what he claimed was mint syrup. When she wondered, he poured the contents into the sink. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time,” she says.
Despite the harrowing ordeal Pericot endured, she said she plans to visit her ex-husband in prison as part of the “healing process.”
She did not speak to him directly during the trial, she said. Now she wants to “look him in the eye and ask him, ‘Why did you do that?'”
Her views on their 50-year marriage are complicated. While she spoke of feelings of betrayal and resentment, she said she would like to hold on to her happy memories as they are the only things she has in her life.
Pericot’s interview was an opportunity for her to address the rift that has developed within her family since the revelations. She says it’s a mistake to think that “tragedy brings families together.” She said her relationship with daughter Caroline is slowly improving, but son David “needs more time”.
“I chose to live with Mr. Pericot,” she explained. “They’re in a different position because they didn’t choose their father. And I think the journey will take longer.”
Pericot never imagined that she would fall in love again, nor did she want to fall in love again. But in 2023, she meets a man she only recognizes as Jean Roux. “Meeting him was incredible,” she said. “I met a man who had been through a similar difficult time, and it changed our lives.”
Camille Knight contributed to this report.
