Giselle Pellico, the woman at the centre of France's biggest rape trial, has told the BBC she was "devastated" by the discovery that her husband had drugged her for years and invited dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious.
"Something exploded inside me," says Pelico, 73, speaking of the moment she realized the extent of her husband's crimes.
"It was like a tsunami."
In an extensive interview ahead of the publication of her memoir, Ode to life, she describes how the phone conversations with her three children, when she told them what she had discovered about their father, were probably the most difficult experience of her life.
'Plunging into hell'
She recalls the moment she decided to waive her legal right to anonymity and how she has never regretted that decision.
She also reveals how she still has unanswered questions she wants to ask her now-ex-husband, the man she calls "Mr. Pelico," in prison, where he is serving a 20-year sentence.
Warning: This article contains testimonies of rape and sexual assault
The Hotel de Ville in central Paris, with its painted ceilings and expensive woodwork, is a stark contrast to the somber courtroom where Pellico was last seen in public, during a four-month trial that shook France.
She describes the moment that marked the beginning of what she describes as a "descent into hell."
She followed her husband, Dominique Pellicault, to a police station near their home in Mazan, southern France.
He was summoned for secretly filming women up the skirts of a supermarket.
A police officer took Peliko aside and began asking her increasingly direct questions.
What kind of man is her husband?
Great, she replied.
Did they participate in a swinger party?
No, of course not, she protested.
"He said to me, 'I'm going to show you something you're not going to like.' I didn't immediately understand what it was."
The police officer showed her two photos of a lifeless woman on a bed.
These were two of thousands of photos and videos her husband took while she was drugged.
"I didn't recognize myself," she says.
"This woman was lying on the bed as if she were dead. There were men around her. I didn't understand who they were. I didn't know them. I had never met them."
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He pauses, playing with his red-rimmed reading glasses.
As she recounts the shock that gripped her, her voice softens, but never wavers.
Police told Peliko that she had been raped repeatedly by dozens of men.
Although her husband recorded, tagged, and neatly cataloged the rape footage on a hard drive, many of the men could not be identified.
The police advised her not to stay alone after being told this news.
She went home in a flash and called her friend.
“I told her, ‘Dominique is in custody because he raped me and had me raped.’ That was the first time I used the word rape. After five hours of questioning, I called Pelico’s crime by its true name.”
'I heard my daughter's scream. It was almost inhuman'
Her three adult children, David, Karolina and Florian, also had to find out what their father had done.
“I was perfectly aware that it would be extremely difficult for my children,” says Pelico.
She now considers those three phone calls to be the hardest thing she has ever had to do in her life.
She recalls Caroline's reaction: "I heard my daughter screaming. It was almost inhuman, that scream of hers."
She remembers how David, her oldest child, was in a state of shock, and Florian, the youngest, immediately asked how she was.
"They realized I was alone and that I might do something stupid. And it was like an explosion for them."
Her children left the next day to be with her in Mazan.
All three, meanwhile, spoke of how they destroyed or threw out family possessions, from furniture to photo albums, in an attempt to erase their father's existence.
Their mother stood aside and watched.
"I told myself that my life was ruined, that I had nothing left but my children."
Since David's birth, when Pelico was in her early twenties, her children have been the most important thing in her life.
Motherhood became a way to leave behind a childhood marked by sadness.
“I lost my mother at a very young age, and my brother and father,” she recalls.
"And so I had to rebuild everything I had lost."
In the interview, Peliko talks about her loving parents, whose marriage greatly influenced her experience of love.
She was nine years old when her mother died of cancer, which plunged her father and family into grief from which they never fully recovered.
Meeting Dominik Pellicco, 19 years old, handsome and equally marked by a difficult upbringing, gave her the opportunity to start over.
They got married in 1973.
"We were very much in love with each other and we gave in to life. And we started a family, because that was my main goal," she recalls in a confident voice.
Unfathomable betrayal
In 2011, Peliko began suffering from memory loss.
She attributed them to neurological problems, but she also suffered from ongoing gynecological problems.
It was later proven that they were caused by the sedatives she was given and the strangers who came to rape her several times a week.
She went to a large number of doctors.
Her husband was with her during these examinations, which yielded no conclusions.
He was also present every morning after the nightly assaults.
"It was inconceivable that this man who shared my life could commit these horrors," says Pellicco.
"I would get up and have breakfast, and he would look me in the eye. And I don't know how he could betray me all those years."
She would later find out that, in addition to the drugs, her husband had been giving her strong muscle relaxants so that the next day she wouldn't feel the pain from what her body was going through.
She now believes that her abused body was close to giving up and that her life was in danger.
"It's hard for me to accept that he had no mercy," she says.
This discovery left a mark on the entire family, says Peliko.
"It's wrong to think that a tragedy like this brings a family closer together. It took us a long time to recover."
Her daughter Karolina in particular was condemned to “permanent suffering,” she says, since pictures of her sleeping in her underwear were found on her father’s laptop.
"The incestuous light he cast on his own daughter, it was completely unbearable for me."
Gisele Pellico's ex-husband gave contradictory explanations for the photos.
Karolina is convinced that he drugged and raped her too, but the lack of further evidence means he was never prosecuted for it.
Relations between mother and daughter were tense during the trial, with Karolina stating that she felt like a "forgotten victim."
At various times, both before and after the trial, Giselle Pellico lost contact with some of the children.
“Carolina took time, because she is filled with hatred and anger, feelings that I don't have,” says Pellicco.
"I feel neither hatred nor anger. I felt betrayed and disgusted by Peliko, but that's who I am."
Pelico says she and her daughter are now rebuilding their relationship.
"It took us both time to find our own path. Today we are trying to bring each other peace and I hope we are on the right path to healing."
New discoveries
Discovery after discovery followed.
In 2022, police informed Giselle Pelico that her husband had confessed to attempting to rape a young woman.
He also found himself under investigation for the murder of a 23-year-old real estate agent in Paris in 1991, a charge he denies.
The knowledge that her husband could be a murderer, in addition to being a serial rapist, is too much for Peliko.
"I dare to hope that he is not the perpetrator of this heinous crime, because it would mean another plunge into hell, both for me and for my children."
While the investigation was ongoing, she moved to the peaceful Ile de Re, a small island off the French Atlantic coast.
"I really wanted to stay in the shadows," she says.
"I absolutely didn't want anyone to know who I was."
As is the case with all rape victims in France, Pelicot had the right to a trial behind closed doors - complete anonymity, without the media.
She resisted her daughter's suggestion to have an open trial, worried that it would cement her status as a victim of a heinous crime.
And then, as she walked along the beach, four months before the trial began, something inside her changed.
A closed trial would mean that the men on trial would also benefit from that anonymity, she realized.
Moreover, she will be in a huge minority, 51 men and 40 lawyers against her, her small defense team and her children.
'If I managed to do this, then all victims can'
"I carried this shame for more than four years," says Peliko.
"And I felt like it was a double punishment for the victims and the suffering we were inflicting on ourselves."
Her lawyers gave her a week to decide whether she really wanted to open the trial to the public and media.
She only needed one night.
"I knew the next morning," she says.
It was an exceptional decision.
“I never regretted that decision, not once,” she says.
"It was also a message for all the victims who don't dare do the same... It could give them some of the strength I found within myself."
"Because," she says without hesitation, "we have within us a strength we don't even suspect. And if I could do this, all victims can too. I'm convinced of that."
The Pellicot trial exploded in 2024 before the eyes of France and the entire world.
Giselle Pellico's ability to allow the depravity she was exposed to to be seen, the "filth," as she repeatedly calls it, is a testament to her resilience.
Every day she held her head high as she entered the courtroom in Avignon.
Many women gathered outside to show her support, and she greeted them with a gentle nod of her head and a hand on her heart.
Surrounded by dozens of cameras, Pelico says they gave her "incredible strength."
"As far as I'm concerned, they mitigated what was happening in the courtroom," she says.
"If I were alone, I think it would be difficult for me."
Even Queen Camilla reached out from the UK to express her admiration in a personal letter, which surprised her.
"I was touched and very honored... I'm grateful to her," she says.
"Thank you for being so brave," says one woman.
"We are here to support you! Life is beautiful, madam!" says another.
As one radiant face follows another, Peliko, for the first time, wipes away a tear.
"It touches me immensely, because these are the faces I met during the trial," she says.
"I saw them putting up posters, I saw their collages, I saw their banners."
“They were truly exceptional,” she smiles.
In the courtroom, Pelico and her family sat listening to nearly four months of twisted insinuations and outright accusations of sympathy, from both the defendants and their lawyers.
"You're going through hell in the courtroom. You're really humiliated," she says.
At the time, this led her to call what was happening a "cowardly trial."
And now, as she recalls those moments, her voice rises slightly.
"They didn't want to accept responsibility for what they did," she says of the 50 men her husband allowed to abuse her.
She believes they are acting as if they committed a petty crime and refuse to accept that she could have refused to consent.
"Then a recording would be shown confirming the truth," he says.
"We would see a man raping me. He would be asked the same questions again and he would say, 'No, I didn't rape her, I didn't intend to rape her.'
“And what should we do?” she asks herself out loud, exasperated.
"I think that as far as they were concerned, they couldn't have raped me, because Mr. Peliko was willing and he gave consent. Therefore, they didn't consider it rape," she concludes.
That argument was rejected by the seven judges who presided over the case.
All defendants were found guilty.
Her ex-husband (their divorce was finalized shortly before the trial began) received a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
Another 50 men were sentenced to prison terms of between five and 15 years.
Renewal of life
As Pellico speaks, a tall, bespectacled widower named Jean-Loup watches discreetly from the side.
She met him on Il de Re in 2023.
“We were incredibly lucky,” she says, her voice measured and warm.
"We fell in love as teenagers, when neither of us expected it."
They have been a couple ever since.
"Life brought me a man who has the same values, the same principles as me, and who has also gone through all sorts of hardships in life."
"As you can see," she adds, her head tilted to one side, "life always brings beautiful surprises. It has brought a lot of color into our lives."
It has been almost six years since Giselle Pellico was shown photographs of a woman who appeared to be "dead."
The question of why her husband subjected her to years of abuse still looms over everyone.
Dominic Pellicco admitted in court that he wanted to "subdue an indomitable woman."
"He would have liked me to participate in swinger sessions, and I always refused because I have a sense of decency," he says.
"I think he found a way around it by subduing me."
But how he came to do what he did is another question entirely.
"I could wonder about that for the rest of my life," she says.
Pellicco says she intends to visit him in prison and ask him what he did with their daughter Carolina and in relation to the murder case he is connected to.
"I need to meet him to get those answers. I don't know if I'll do it, but I need to look him straight in the eye."
Meanwhile, the rebuilding of her life continues.
"I'm healing," he says.
She resists the idea of completely giving up the life she led with her ex-husband.
"In order to live, I had to think that the 50 years I spent with Mr. Pelliceau were not just a lie. Because otherwise, it would be as if I were dead. As if I no longer existed."
During one of the rare moments she came out to testify, Pelico told her ex-husband that his betrayal was "unfathomable."
"I always tried to lead you to the light, but you chose the deepest depths of the human soul," she said.
That's the thought he's repeating now.
In life, she says, "you always have to make choices, to decide which path to follow. There is a right one and there is a wrong one."
"As for me," she concludes in a composed voice, "I have always chosen to move towards what is best."
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