ELLEN RANSLEY: Gisele Pelicot deserves our awe and gratitude for shifting the shame of rape

Gisèle Pelicot is a hero.

The retired 72-year-old French grandmother captured the world’s attention when she waived her anonymity and lifted the veil on the depraved abuse she had suffered at the hands of her husband, and at least 50 other men, for close to a decade.

“Shame must change sides,” she said back in September, in words that would come to define the proceeding trial.

In a courtroom in Avignon on Thursday, her husband was found guilty of orchestrating and participating in her mass rape. More than 50 men other men were found guilty of their horrendous crimes against her. Another 11 have yet to be identified, and may never be held accountable.

When she walked out of the courtroom, she was met with applause and cheers from a crowd of overwhelmingly women — a small sample of the millions of supporters she’s gathered around the world.

There can be no doubt that her bravery, composure, and courage to sit in that room every day, listen to the gross testimony of her husband and the denials of some of her abusers, has not only changed France, but rewritten the global narrative around sexual assault.

Rape has existed forever. It’s not a new phenomenon.

But in a country where rape has historically not been taken seriously, this trial broke any remaining ideas that only certain people were raped, or only certain types of men rape.

The scale of the abuse Mme Pelicot suffered made it painfully clear that there is no one-size-fits-all sexual predator.

She and her ex-husband had been married for almost 50 years. Her abusers ranged in age from their twenties to their seventies. They were nurses, factory workers, shopkeepers, unemployed. They were neighbours and strangers.

One perpetrator said he had “not paid attention” to whether Mme Pelicot had consented. Another said the “husband had given me permission”. Others made out they had been sold on a swinging situation, others sought to blame and shame her.

Not all men rape, not all men are violent or controlling, not all men think women owe them something, but 51 men (plus the others that still haven’t been identified) took the opportunity to rape the same unconscious woman.

The case was a watershed moment — but it almost didn’t happen. The depth of her husband’s deception and perverse abuse only came to light because of one police officer’s insistence that Pelicot — who was caught filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket — be investigated.

Even when the case made it to trial, it took the world’s media to publish the sordid details for the French press to pay it attention.

Convictions for rape are rare in France. An estimated 94 per cent of reports were dropped in 2020, according to a 2024 report by the country’s Public Policy Institute.

Only 10 to 15 per cent of rape complaints ended in a criminal conviction.

In a country where a serious reckoning was well overdue, Mme Pelicot’s powerful insistence her rapists be held accountable demanded France finally have a serious conversation about its history of letting survivors down.

And, while 51 men were sentenced to jail terms, campaigners and Mme Pelicot’s children have expressed disappointment some were as short as three years, with two sentences suspended.

Justice is a spectrum, and outside the courtroom on Thursday, Mme Pelicot paid tribute to all survivors who will never get any.

“I think of the victims, unrecognised, whose stories often remain hidden. I want you to know that we share the same struggle.”

Mme Pelicot deserves our awe, and gratitude. But no one person should have to be that strong.

The toll she has suffered cannot be underestimated, nor ever really understood. Her brave face masks deep psychological wounds and scars she will live with for the rest of her life.

But her courage to step out of the shadows, and not just be Gisele P, but Gisele Pelicot, must mean that for generations to come, sexual assault survivors do not carry shame.

“I have nothing to be ashamed of” must be a legacy we reform systems and cultures around.

That shame must always, forever more, lie squarely on the shoulders of every single abuser.

There is a long way to go to ensure that becomes the reality. But this trial was a reckoning, and the world cannot let it pass us by.