PARIS (AP) — Gisèle Pelicot's brain froze as the French police officer revealed the unthinkable.
“Fifty-three men had come to our house to rape me,” she recalls him telling her.
Sharing details of the horror that until now had largely been reserved for French courts, Pelicot is publicly telling her story of survival and courage in her own words, in a book and her first series of interviews since a landmark trial in 2024 turned her into a global icon against sexual violence and imprisoned her husband who knocked her out with drugs so other men could assault her inert body.
Extracts of “A Hymn to Life, Shame Has to Change Sides," published Tuesday by French newspaper Le Monde, rewound to Nov. 2, 2020 — the day when her world fell apart.
Her then-husband, Dominique Pelicot, had been summoned by police for questioning after a supermarket security guard caught him secretly taking video up women’s skirts.
Gisèle accompanied him and was completely unprepared for the bombshell delivered by the officer, Laurent Perret. Gradually, and with care, he explained how the man she regarded as a loving husband and whom she described as “a super guy" had, in fact, made her the unwitting victim of his perversions.
“I am going to show you photos and videos that are not going to please you,” the officer said, words she recounts in the book.
The first showed a man raping a woman who had been laid out on her side and dressed up in a suspender belt.
“That's you in this photo,” the officer said.
He then showed her another photo, and another after that — drawn from a collection of images that Dominique Pelicot took of his wife over the years when he regularly knocked her unconscious by lacing her food and drink with drugs, so strangers he invited to their home could assault her while he filmed.
Gisèle Pelicot couldn't believe that the inert woman in the photos was her.
“I didn’t recognize the individuals. Nor this woman. Her cheek was so flabby. Her mouth so limp. She was a rag doll,” she writes in her book.
“My brain stopped working in the office of Deputy Police Sergeant Perret."
The shocking case and her courage in demanding that it be tried in open court spurred a national reckoning about the blight of rape culture. The harrowing trial ended in December 2024 with guilty verdicts for all 51 defendants.
Dominique Pelicot and 49 other men were convicted of rapes and sexual assaults over a period of nearly a decade. Another man was convicted of drugging and raping his own wife with Dominique Pelicot’s help.
Dominique Pelicot, found guilty on all charges, was given the maximum possible sentence of 20 years in prison. The sentences ranged from three to 15 years imprisonment for the other convicted men. Only one of them subsequently appealed and saw his sentence for rape increased from nine to 10 years imprisonment.
In the book extracts published by Le Monde, Pelicot says that accepting the possibility of a closed-door trial would have protected her abusers and left her alone with them in court, “hostage to their looks, their lies, their cowardice and their scorn.”
“No one would know what they had done to me. Not a single journalist would be there to write their names next to their crimes,” she explains. “Above all, not a single woman could walk in and sit in the courtroom to feel less alone.”
The 73-year-old adds that had she been twenty years younger, "I might not have dared to refuse a closed-door hearing.”
“I would have feared the stares,” she writes. “Those damned stares a woman of my generation has always had to contend with, those damned stares that make you hesitate in the morning between trousers and a dress, that follow you or ignore you, flatter you and embarrass you. Those damned stares that are supposed to tell you who you are, what you’re worth, and then abandon you as you grow older.”
FILE - Gisele Pelicot leaves the courthouse for a break during the appeals trial in the case of a man challenging his conviction, less than a year after the landmark verdict in a drugging and rape trial that shook France, on Oct. 9, 2025 in Nimes, southern France. (AP Photo/Lewis Joly)
AHMEDABAD, India (AP) — South Africa held off Afghanistan in a dramatic double tiebreaker Wednesday at the Twenty20 World Cup, with spinner Keshav Maharaj just holding his nerve in the second Super Over.
It was one of the tightest, most seesawing matches in elite cricket's shortest international format.
Fazalhaq Farooqi’s runout ended Afghanistan’s chance to win it in regulation with two balls to spare, with his team finishing all out for 187 after 19.4 overs chasing South Africa's 187 for six.
That meant it had to go to a tiebreaker — the so-called Super Over. Twice.
Afghanistan posted 17 in the first Super Over and Farooqi was in position to win it again, this time with his bowling. He restricted South Africa to 11 runs with one ball remaining until Tristan Stubbs plundered a six to level the scores again.
South Africa batted first in the second tiebreaker, posting 23 with David Miller and Stubbs combining for three sixes off Azmatullah Omarzai.
Maharaj seemingly gave the 2024 T20 World Cup finalists control with a wicket and two dot balls to start the second Super Over, leaving Afghanistan needing 24 runs from four balls. That would usually require clearing the boundary rope four times.
Enter Rahmanullah Gurbaz. With nothing to lose, the big-hitting opener — who earlier blazed 84 from 42 deliveries as Afghanistan chased down South Africa's target — plundered three consecutive sixes to get the equation down to six runs off one delivery.
A wide from Maharaj lowered the target to 5 from one delivery, and raised the prospect of yet another tiebreaker. But the South African finished it off when he had Gurbaz caught out. It was game over.
Lungi Ngidi, who took 3-26 during the match and then bowled the first of the Super Overs for South Africa, was voted player of the match.
“I’ve lost so much weight today. I’ve never been that stressed in my life in a cricket game,” he said. “Being able to win two Super Overs with our hitters hitting like that … very happy.”
South Africa is 2-0 after winning its opening game over Canada. Afghanistan is now 0-2 after an opening loss to New Zealand and unlikely to progress to the Super Eights from a group containing three highly-ranked teams. Only the top two teams in each of the four groups will advance.
Quinton de Kock (59) and Ryan Rickelton (61) combined in a 114-run second-wicket partnership to set South Africa on course for 187-6 after being sent in by Afghanistan.
The South Africans were 98-1 at the halfway point of the innings, with 23 runs coming off the 10th over from Noor Ahmad.
But Rashid Khan’s double-wicket strike in the 13th over, removing both established batters, stemmed the flow of runs.
The South Africans added 60 in the last seven overs, and Azmatullah Omarzai returned 3-41 for Afghanistan.
Afghanistan lost wickets in clumps, racing to 51 in 4.1 overs before losing three wickets within seven deliveries.
Ngidi took a pair of wickets within three deliveries with clever slower balls and Kagiso Rabada chimed in with a wicket in the sixth over as Afghanistan slipped to 52-3.
Gurbaz then combined in a 69-run fourth-wicket stand with Darwish Rasooli (15) until both batters were dismissed in the 13th over with the total at 121.
Gurbaz was brilliantly caught by George Linde, diving at short third man off Maharaj’s bowling. Rasooli was run out two balls later.
Azmatullah (22), Rashid (20) and Noor Ahmad (15 not out) somehow combined in the lower order to get Afghanistan into a winning position, needing just two off three deliveries.
In a tense final over of regulation, Rabada bowled two no-balls and a wide but was saved when No. 11 Farooqi was run out attempting a second run.
In the second game Wednesday, an injury-depleted Australia won the toss and elected to bat in its tournament opener against Ireland. Travis Head was standing in as captain after Mitch Marsh was ruled out of the game. Marsh was hit in the groin in practice earlier in the week and Cricket Australia issued a statement just before the game saying scans showed internal testicular bleeding.
In the last game of the day, England is due to take on West Indies in Group C.
AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket
Afghanistan's Rahmanullah Gurbaz plays a shot during the T20 World Cup cricket match between Afghanistan and South Africa in Ahmedabad, India, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
South Africa's Quinton de Kock plays a shot during the T20 World Cup cricket match between Afghanistan and South Africa in Ahmedabad, India, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
South Africa's Ryan Rickel, left with Quinton de Kock greet each other after scoring fifty runs during the T20 World Cup cricket match between Afghanistan and South Africa in Ahmedabad, India, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
Afghanistan's Noor Ahmad plays a shot during the T20 World Cup cricket match between Afghanistan and South Africa in Ahmedabad, India, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
South Africa's Kagiso Rabada looks on with a ball as he run out Afghanistan's Fazalhaq Farooqi during the T20 World Cup cricket match between Afghanistan and South Africa in Ahmedabad, India, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
Afghanistan's captain Rashid Khan reacts after failing to catch a shot from New Zealand's Tim Seifert during the T20 World Cup cricket match between Afghanistan and New Zealand in Chennai, India, Sunday, Feb. 8, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahesh Kumar A.)
South Africa's captain Aiden Markram practice prior to start the match during the T20 World Cup cricket match between Afghanistan and South Africa in Ahmedabad, India, Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki)
