Last night at New York’s 92NY, 900 people jumped to their feet as a 73-year-old woman walked onto the stage. It was Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman whose refusal to cower in shame during the trial against her former husband and 50 other men who raped her became a rallying cry for women worldwide.
Pelicot soon told us, through a translator, that it was her first time ever in New York. Earlier in her trip, she had met with Gloria Steinem, she posted on Instagram. It’s a remarkable journey for a woman who says that in her youth, the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s did not speak to her; she was focused on building her family.
Pelicot just published her memoir, A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides. In the book, she describes her 50 years with Dominique Pelicot and their children, the discovery that he had been drugging her and inviting men to their home in southern France to rape her, her reversal from wanting a closed-door hearing to deciding to adjudicate the case in public, and her life since (including with her new beau, Jean-Loup).
She was in conversation in New York with Megan Twohey, the New York Times journalist and co-author of She Said who broke the Harvey Weinstein story in 2017 that led to the take-off of the #MeToo movement. This was Pelicot’s only public event in the U.S.
“It was the solitude that really helped me,” Pelicot told the audience of the years-long period in which she considered whether to allow a trial to proceed in public. “It was at that point that I really came to believe that there is shame here, and it’s not the victims who must bear the shame, it is really those who victimize that must bear the shame. And when I began to focus on that, it gave me strength.”
Throughout the trial, Pelicot had to see those 50 men, most of whom said that they weren’t rapists because Dominique Pelicot had given them permission. Those men sat in the courtroom, where Pelicot was face to face with them and their families; some of them even went out for drinks together afterwards. But outside the courtroom, she was surrounded by thousands—and globally, millions—of supporters of her own. People sent letters of admiration addressed only to “Gisèle Pelicot, France” that somehow found their way to her, she said.
“It made me feel that I wasn’t alone. When I would see all of these women around me, I would see them waiting on line to get into the room that was the overflow room in the courtroom. I just was so amazed, but also they gave me strength.”
That spirit was alive and well on the Upper East Side last night, where the power of Pelicot’s global influence was clear. As she left the stage, she got a second 2-minute standing ovation while she waved an emotional goodbye to the crowd.
Merci, Madame Pelicot.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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PARTING WORDS
"Sometimes we think that the only options are being a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in a big pond, but my advice is to create your own pond."
— Olympian Eileen Gu's advice to women seeking to reach her heights of career success as one of the world's highest-paid female athletes, which she shared with me at the Shift's gala
