Warning: This story contains descriptions of alleged sexual misconduct.
A few weeks after the start of the trial, Giselle Pellicot decided it was time to take off her sunglasses.
And the reason was not only the weaker autumn sun in the medieval city of Avignon in the south of France.
It was also an indication that she had overcome an important hurdle - one of many that marked her slow, painful journey from serene grandmother, to tormented and ashamed rape victim, to frightened courtroom witness and global icon of courage and defiance.
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"She wore those sunglasses to hide her eyes ... to protect her privacy," said Stefan Babunu, a young criminal lawyer who represented Giselle Pellicot for two years in the case against her ex-husband Dominic, and now against more 50 men on trial for allegedly raping Mrs. Peliko.
"But there came a moment when she felt she no longer needed to protect herself.
"She didn't need [the glasses]," Babunu said, using the moment to describe the slow transformation of an "honest ... very modest person" who was "extremely worried" and shocked by the publicity at the start of the trial, and who still feels "very embarrassed by what happened to her".
During the trial, Giselle Pellicot, 72, said almost nothing about her ordeal, except for occasional and brief comments to supporters at the Palace of Justice in Avignon.
But Babunu, who is now speaking with his client's approval, began to give us a glimpse of how she behaved in court and how she slowly and methodically tried to regain her life and peace of mind, to a limited extent.
Another moment was important.
It was earlier this year, in May.
Babunu and his colleague Antoine Cama watched some of the 20.000 gruesome, graphic videos and photos that police discovered in 2020 on Dominik Peliko's hard drive.
It was a grim task, and Babun says the videos were "absolutely disgusting".
But the sound was even more terrifying.
"You can hear Mrs. Peliko snoring... you can hear her breathing.
"It's even more disturbing to listen to her choke as some of the men abuse her.
"The sound was very important [evidence]".
Babunu knew that without those videos, "most likely, there would be no trial, no case".
Mrs. Peliko also understood this, but, which would be understandable for her mental health, she could have decided not to watch those recordings.
However, she tells Babun that one day she simply said, "I'm ready now."
So she sat down next to two lawyers in their office, and they told her that they would show carefully selected portions of all the videos and explain who the men were and what they would see them do to her.
Then Babunu played the video and images of the Pelikos' bedroom in their house in the village of Mazan, near Avignon, appeared on the screen.
Giselle remained calm and watched carefully.
"How could he?" she finally blurted out.
This was a question she kept repeating in the following days.
A little later, she noted the date on one of the videos.
"That was on the evening of my birthday."
"It happened in [my] daughter's bed, in her beach house."
Babunu says that Ms. Peliko was outraged, but he also noted that she never cried and that with the help of experts, she was able to "make an incredible departure from what she was watching."
For the lawyers, this was the "ultimate test" that showed their client had regained "some kind of balance" over the four years since November 4, 2020, when she was informed of her husband's actions and "her world was destroyed."
Now she was ready to face the details that would be presented during the public trial.
Mrs. Pelico wanted to watch the tapes to understand who all these men were and to fill in the gaps in her memory caused by the drugs her husband drugged her with over the years.
"There are whole parts of her life that she doesn't remember," Baboon explained.
These were the practical reasons why she decided to make the trial public and ask for the videos to be shown in court.
She was more than angry, for sure.
But at that stage her goal was not to change the world.
She was simply nervous because otherwise she would have to spend months in a closed courtroom full of men who abused her.
She thought a public trial would be less intimidating.
The first day of the trial was still traumatic.
When she first appeared in public, she wore sunglasses, but the situation soon became quite embarrassing.
Climbing with her up the stairs towards the courthouse, Babunu noticed and recognized some of the accused men, who were wearing masks.
But Mrs. Pelico slowly became aware that she was now surrounded by them and that they were elbowing each other as they pushed each other through the same security checks.
"It was stressful for her and she was surprised how casual everything seemed," Babunu recalls.
And then, for the first time in four years, the eyes of Gisele and Dominique Pellicot met in a crowded courtroom.
Their chairs were arranged so that eye contact was inevitable.
"I saw that they sometimes exchanged glances," he told Babunu.
Gisele repeatedly told her team that she was worried about how she would react to that first meeting.
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Now we know that Dominic Pellico confessed everything during his testimony in court and that he begged the family for forgiveness.
We also know that Giselle Pellicot has not forgiven him.
"Of course not, she can't forgive him," said Babun.
And yet, the couple was once very much in love.
They were married for 50 years.
And in the courtroom, Babunu felt that the former couple could not completely ignore their shared past.
So what did the lawyer see in those looks they exchanged?
It was as if they were saying "look at us," he told Babun.
He sensed that they were expressing a shared sense of disbelief to each other.
It was almost as if for a brief moment they were onlookers of the agony two strangers were going through.
"How did we get here?"
During the trial, the defense attorneys of various defendants tried to present that Gisela's composure and lack of tears somehow indicated that she was an accomplice in her own abuse, or that she sympathized with Dominic Pelico.
"Something is always criticized either when the victim doesn't cry or cries too much," Babunu said with a hint of disdain.
But while such statements clearly upset Ms. Peliko, she told her legal team not to worry.
And the reason for that was simple.
Nothing the defense lawyers could say in court could compare to the worst moment of her life – the day in November 2020, when she was shown at the police station the first images that investigators retrieved from her husband's hard drive.
"You know I survived November 2, 2020, so now I'm ready for anything," Babun remembers her words.
Giselle Pelico was surprised that public and media interest did not wane as the trial progressed, as she and her team expected.
Instead, she started receiving letters, gifts and support from people.
"When she started getting these letters, she felt a kind of responsibility for the victims who suffered similar things," Babunu said.
She realized how unique her case was - that the video evidence meant it wasn't just "the word of the victim against the word of the suspect," and that she now had a rare opportunity "to change society."
"I am lucky that there is evidence, which is very rare.
"So I have to go through [all this] to represent all the victims," she told Babunu.
Her lawyer again noted the "simple", practical nature of his client.
She is not interested in being an "activist", but is just thinking about how her experience of being drugged without knowing it can now help other women to be aware of this problem and look for possible signs of similar abuse.
If she had known then what the whole of France knows now, she might have been able to end her suffering.
And maybe other women can do it now.
And as for the future, Peliko may agree to a few interviews in the coming months.
But she made it clear that she wants "to stay who she is...she wants to lead a very simple life."
And while she may never forgive her once "perfect" ex-husband, she has found a way to manage her memories of him and hold on to the "happy times" they shared.
Some psychiatrists argue that Dominic Pellico is a relatively typical psychopath - a high-functioning narcissist with no capacity for empathy who skillfully maneuvered between his dirty secret life and the self-indulgent role of a family man.
Giselle Pellicot sees things more simply and accepts the theory presented at the trial that Dominic is a split personality.
"There were two men in Dominik Peliko and she only knew one of them," says Babunu.
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