‘They are weapons of war’: Gisèle Pelicot on the tech platforms that facilitate rape

I had seen Gisèle Pelicot’s face many times throughout her historic trial and her dogged activism in its aftermath – I’d seen her on TV screens, on my Instagram feed, in news articles, her face slightly blurred by the tears in my own eyes as she bravely told the world that “shame must change sides”. As a survivor of sexual abuse myself, I know all too well that there are so many hard moments we have to endure – but for me, watching brave, empowered women fight for us the way Gisèle did is not one of them. Those are the best moments. Those moments are what keep me going.

So the tidal wave of gratitude and awe that crashed over me when I met her in person was a feeling I’ll never forget. Anyone who tells you not to meet your heroes hasn’t had the good fortune of meeting Gisèle Pelicot. 

We met on a Tuesday during a London heatwave, in the lobby of an elegant office space. I watched from the doorway as she exited her taxi with Caroline, her daughter, her literary agent Susanna, her publicist Klara and her translator Carine. 

Gisèle embraced me immediately, entirely exuding warmth and kindness. I was amazed at how relaxed she made me feel. She was generous and patient with my stuttered, nervous French, embracing me again when I told her that I was a survivor too, and that she had helped me find strength. 

Gisèle had recently appeared at the Hay festival to promote her memoir A Hymn to Life, where accounts of her appearance were dominated by her finding love after her ordeal, and also with Cathy Newman on Sky News, where she made incisive comments about the three teenage boys who were recently spared prison time despite being convicted of rape. I wanted to ask her about the other ways we can protect women and girls from sexual violence – such as holding to account the tech companies that host websites like the one that enabled her husband’s sexual abuse ring, or helping survivors fight their feelings of shame, or finding hope in knowing that we are not alone.

I started with a question that often comes at the end of interviews like this: “There's something so, so beautiful in this book about hope and about keeping faith in people and being able to hold on to faith throughout everything you went through. How do you hold on to that faith in people?”

“I think it has always been inside me because I have been through complicated moments in my life,” she said. “I lost my mother very young. I had a somewhat atypical path in that I had a stepmother who was not very kind, and I had to face adversity. 

“I understood very quickly that life would not be easy, that you had to face the difficult moments. In my life, I have always had this strength inside me, telling myself that I would get back up. You know, it's like the boxer who falls on the ring and gets back up every time. And it was also a way of saying I am still standing. I am here, still standing.” 

Gisèle was forced to endure the unbearable – she discovered that her husband, Dominique Pelicot, had been drugging and raping her while she was unconscious over the course of many years. Not only that, he was coordinating with at least 50 other men whom he would bring to their home so that they, too, could rape her while she was unconscious. She had absolutely no knowledge of the extensive, coordinated sexual abuse ring of which she was the victim. 

That is, she had no knowledge until French police showed her videos of herself – prone, comatose – being raped. This hard evidence meant that, unlike so many sexual offences, Gisèle’s case went to trial and all of the men were convicted. But, as in so many such cases that do go to trial, she was made to feel “utterly humiliated” by defence lawyers – “because the victim is inevitably the guilty one,” she told me. 

Under the French legal system, Gisèle was entitled to total anonymity during her trial. But she chose to waive it – making the brave decision to make herself known to the world as she endured the retraumatisation that is parcelled out by the criminal justice system in so many rape cases.

“When you are a victim of sexual violence, that shame sticks to your skin,” she told me. “You isolate yourself, you are afraid, you are ashamed, you tell yourself that you must be guilty of something, that you are responsible for something.

“But I realised I was none of that. So I told myself that for this trial, I was going to oppose the closed hearing – but not just for me, for all those women who could not speak, who could not report.” 

Gisèle is visibly emotional when she talks about how many women have contacted her to tell her how much she has helped them. One of those women, of course, was me. 

“I think the fact that I opposed the closed hearing freed women's voices,” she said. “Many women tell me today: I dare to speak, I dare to say things, and often they spent years feeling unable to speak out because it was unbearable.”

Gisèle’s case shocked the world for so many reasons – it opened our eyes to the ubiquity of drug-facilitated sexual abuse. It was horrifying in the sheer scale of its operation – the fact that at least 50 men within a 70-mile radius wanted to be active participants in an organised sexual abuse ring involving an unconscious woman. 

But it also shocked the world because of the technology that enabled it, and the impunity with which that technology was used. 

Dominique Pelicot used a website called Coco, an unmoderated platform offering registration-free access to chatrooms that have been used to facilitate sexual abuse of children, drug-facilitated rape such as Gisèle’s case, other drug offences, other forms of rape and even murder.

When I asked Gisèle about how much responsibility she thought these websites had for what happened to her, she was unequivocal. “They are weapons of war,” she said. “They are platforms of war and violence.”

On Coco, Gisèle says, it was clear that “everything was premeditated, everything was orchestrated”. She said that allowing such companies to exist was “handing a weapon to these individuals”. 

“As soon as a platform like that is set up, it should immediately be shut down,” she said. “We should not even have to ask the question.”

“It is time there is a collective awakening about this,” she added. 

Gisèle said she was shocked to hear that websites like this still existed. I told her about the recent CNN investigation that uncovered a similar platform, now shut down, hosted in the Netherlands. Motherless – a porn site that described itself as a “moral-free zone” – had entire sections dedicated to “sleep content”. That phrase, of course, obscures the truth of this “content” – it is, in fact, videos of men drugging and raping women for their own sexual gratification and the sexual gratification of others who pay to see them on the site.

“The people who set up these platforms of war and violence – do they, at any point, think about the fact that they have a mother, a sister, a brother, a cousin, a wife?” Gisèle said. “Do they, in that moment, think about those people they love in life?

“If someone did this to them, how would they react?”

Gisèle said governments and legislators had to intervene to stop these platforms from being created: “Governments must make good decisions on this, because otherwise they are not coming to the aid of victims of violence against women.

“Do we really want governments to give power to all these men, these predators, who are there to trap their prey through chemical submission?”

Earlier this week, Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical – one of the most formal and significant types of public declarations available to the papacy. In it, the pope wrote about the dangers of artificial intelligence, and drew particular attention to the dangers of AI in facilitating sexual exploitation. 

“I am very glad that the pope is taking responsibility: it is time for a pope to take a position on this,” Gisèle told me. “We are in the process of lifting the veil on all these forms of submission.”

I asked her what she would say to survivors who might be reading this, and in particular what she would say about the process of unshackling ourselves from shame. 

“I say to victims of sexual violence today: they are guilty of nothing and responsible for nothing. They must rebuild their confidence,” she said, again visibly emotional.

“They must also overcome their fear, because often we are afraid to speak, afraid of how others will look at us, and that destabilises you forever. So please remember that you can regain confidence in yourselves. 

“I managed to reclaim my life, to trust myself again, and I think we all have within us the resources necessary to get there. I am truly convinced that we can get there. Especially when we are all together. Look around yourself – you are not alone.”

She is clear-eyed about how difficult it is for survivors to seek justice. “I know it’s not easy to go to trial, to report,” she said. “It took me four years to make that decision.

“I am like everyone else. I have my fragilities too, but I want to remain invincible in the face of this story. Above all, I didn't want to fall apart. I could have fallen apart. I even thought about taking steps to end things, because I wasn't sure I could make it.

“But then there was this force in me, telling me I had to get back up, I had to testify.” 

She reiterates that together we are stronger, and emphasises that she is passionate about helping other survivors: “I am there to listen to them, to tell them: do not lose confidence in yourselves.”

Later, I saw that is what she had inscribed in the front of my copy of her memoir: “Ne perdre jamais confiance en vous.”

“Never lose confidence in yourself.”

A Hymn to Life is published by Bodley Head, £22

• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse is available from Rape Crisis. Call 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland