Gisèle Pelicot told a packed audience at the Hay festival in Wales on Saturday that her story was never just about one woman’s ordeal, but about a wider violence against women that too often stays hidden until it becomes impossible to ignore.

Speaking as she promoted her memoir, A Hymn to Life, Pelicot said she had come to the stage after what she called an “absolute miracle,” a public life she never imagined after the abuse she endured. Dominique Pelicot was jailed for 20 years in 2024 after drugging her and allowing other men to sexually assault her while she was unconscious over almost a decade, from 2011 to 2020. Pelicot waived her right to anonymity during the trial and has since become one of France’s most recognised survivors, not by choice but by force of what was done to her.

She said she met her partner, Jean-Loup Agopian, after the ordeal and had once believed she would never trust a man again. “It’s something that I didn’t think could happen, especially at my age,” she said, adding that she had not wanted to fall in love, “but life decided otherwise.” She told the audience, “You see, you can fall in love at any age, it happened to me, it can happen to you, I’m convinced of it.”

The remarks carried a different weight because Pelicot has spoken before about what was taken from her and what it cost to reclaim her life. She said her children and friends were deeply worried when she was being unknowingly drugged, and that the sedation was so strong she still wonders how her body held out for so long. “My children and my friends were very worried for me,” she said, recalling how she would repeat the same things on the phone without remembering it afterward.

Pelicot also said the trial itself brought a different kind of damage. The 51 men ultimately declared guilty of rape, along with their lawyers, tried to humiliate her, she said, because they were going to “make me pay for it very dearly, and that’s what happened, they really tried to humiliate me.” She said the experience left her convinced that she had “didn’t find justice,” even after the convictions.

Her public campaign has grown beyond her own case. Pelicot said, “society has got to wake up,” calling violence against women “an appalling evil that touches all borders.” She told the festival audience that at first she thought her story was personal, “but I realised that, in fact, it was really the tree that hid the forest.” She added that men and women can live together in harmony if children are educated very young, and said she hoped people would move toward “peace and love.”

The case continues to cast a shadow over France. Last month, authorities launched an investigation into the reappearance of the Coco website that Dominique Pelicot used to recruit dozens of strangers to rape his wife. Coco was shut down in June 2024 after being linked to crimes including sexual abuse of children, rape and murder. The renewed inquiry shows how the machinery behind the abuse remains a live issue even after the courtroom verdicts.

Pelicot’s daughter, Caroline Darian, is also pursuing legal action against Dominique Pelicot. Among the images in his possession were two photos of his daughter showing her unconscious on a bed wearing underwear that was not hers, and Pelicot said she believed there had been “an incestuous attitude towards his daughter that was intolerable.” For Pelicot, the story that began in one house in southern France has become something bigger than a criminal case. It is now a test of whether the horror she exposed will force a broader reckoning, or simply be remembered as the exception that proved the rule.