Behind Many Strong Women is a Shattered Individual
We must never forget what they’ve endured and what they face
“Inside me, it is a scene of devastation. The facade may look solid … but behind it…”
These are the words of the woman we’re all proclaiming a hero, ‘the strongest’, ‘the bravest’, and surely, the next Time Magazine Person of the Year? And this is all true; she is all of these. But Gisèle Pelicot is also a woman who has lost the life and the husband she thought she had, as well as suffering physical injuries in the form of STDs.
For those who don’t know this horrific story, Gisèle Pelicot is a 71-year-old French woman who discovered, almost accidentally, that her husband of fifty years had not only been drugging and raping her, but had recruited around ninety men to rape her unconscious body too. This happened for a decade, and most men were local to her.
When a police officer first revealed the horrific truth to Gisèle, he did so by showing her the videos her husband had made of the rapes.
“I asked him to stop. It was unbearable. I was inert, in my bed, and a man was raping me. My world fell apart.”
Dominique Pelicot had meticulously documented the rapes in photos and videos found on his computer when he was investigated after…
