I am in awe of Gisele Pelicot. And I’ve been able to say that to her without any embarrassment or compromising my journalistic credibility.

Towards the end of 2024, as the trial of Madame Pelicot’s former husband and 50 other men for raping and sexual assaulting her was drawing to a close, I went to France to interview her lawyer Stéphane Babonneau for BBC Newsnight. 

He was an impressive lawyer and it became clear why Madame Pelicot trusted him so much to represent her. He was skilled and an expert in the law, but his empathy and care for his client was also evident.

The 73-year-old mother and grandmother has now written a book about her life and she, in consultation with her lawyer and others, decided to grant her only UK TV interview to Newsnight.

I have read A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides four times. There are many emotions I would have expected to feel as I absorbed the horror of what she was subjected to – for almost a decade her husband of 50 years drugged her by mixing his own anxiety and insomnia medication into her wine and food plunging her into a coma-like state, dressed her in underwear she would never have chosen to wear and then raped her.

He also brought dozens and dozens of other men he’d met in the dark corners of the internet into their home........

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