Incomprehensible Betrayal, Unbreakable Survival
This post is a response the “The Interview” episode of The Daily podcast, released on 2/14/26. The audio and video editions of the podcast are included below. You can also read a transcript of the interview. —Tim Tedder
Gisèle Pelicot
I cannot imagine a betrayal worse than Gisèle Pelicot’s story. You likely heard about it in news reports: a French woman who was repeatedly and unknowingly drugged and raped by scores of men, after secretly being drugged by her husband. It is an amazing story, measured in both horror and inspiration. The victim made the unusual choice of going public in her trial rather than remaining anoymous, inspiring many other victims along the way.
There is so much to learn from Gisèle’s experience. I’ll let you listen and come to your own conclusions. But let me highlight one exchange from the interview. The interviewer asks: In the book, you write about how you have struggled to reconcile your happy memories with the knowledge you have now about who Monsieur Pelicot was. You write: “If the last 50 years of my life were taken away from me, it would be as if I had never existed. I would be dead.” That’s a very complicated idea. Can you explain how you’ve tried to work through that?
Gisèle’s response: It might seem strange, but it’s a lot like grieving. You grieve for the life you had. I couldn’t erase all the good memories, because otherwise, I’d lose everything, and my existence would be void. So I held on to those good memories. It’s like sorting your laundry: You separate clean and dirty clothes. I set the dirty laundry aside and kept everything that was clean.
