Gisele Pelicot says love returned after Hay Festival appearance
gisele pelicot told the Hay festival in Wales on Saturday that she has found love and trust again after her rape ordeal. She said she met her partner, Jean-Loup Agopian, after the trial of Dominique Pelicot, the former husband jailed for 20 years in 2024.
“It’s something that I didn’t think could happen, especially at my age, first of all, I didn’t really want to fall in love, but life decided otherwise,” she said. Pelicot also told the audience: “I didn’t think that I’d be able to trust a man, but it’s what happened to me, so you see that everything can be allowed in life, you must never despair.”
Hay Festival in Wales
Pelicot appeared at the festival to discuss her memoir A Hymn to Life, and said “society has got to wake up” on violence against women. She added that what happened to her was an “appalling evil that touches all borders,” and said, “Maybe I’m a very optimistic person by nature, but I would hope that the human being will go towards peace and love.”
Her public remarks carried extra weight because she waived her right to anonymity during Dominique Pelicot’s trial, when she faced the 51 men who were ultimately declared guilty of rape and their lawyers. Dominique Pelicot drugged and raped her and allowed other men to sexually assault her while she was unconscious over almost a decade.
Dominique Pelicot trial
The abuse case has continued to move beyond the courtroom. French authorities launched an investigation last month into the reappearance of a website Dominique Pelicot used to recruit dozens of strangers to rape his wife in their home between 2011 and 2020. Authorities said the French-language platform Coco has been linked to crimes including the sexual abuse of children, rape and murder, and that the website was shut down in June 2024.
Pelicot also said her daughter, Caroline Darian, is pursuing legal action against Dominique Pelicot. She described images in his possession as showing “an incestuous attitude towards his daughter that was intolerable,” and said Darian “didn’t find justice.”
Jean-Loup Agopian and Caroline Darian
Pelicot said of Agopian: “We met, our trajectories crossed at one moment and I met this young man of 73… 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 personal turn in her account sits beside the unresolved legal fallout for her family, as Darian continues her own legal action.
The next visible step in the story is not another ceremony but the continuing legal pressure around the website Coco and the broader case linked to 51 convicted men. Pelicot’s remarks in Wales pushed the public conversation back toward what happens after a trial ends: recovery, family fallout, and whether the institutions around the case keep moving.
