Gisele Pelicot: Society was not prepared for a case like mine'

"The next day, she would only have to get out the butter and make the toast while the smell of coffee filled the kitchen of the small house where she lived with her husband. It was more convenient, of course. But over time and perhaps this is one of the few symptoms that emerged unconsciously while everything was happening she realized that this habit could be a mechanism for mentally skipping bedtime."

"One morning, Gisele Pelicot received a call from the police station to come in with her husband. She was 68 years old and had been married to him for half a century. They had experienced their ups and downs. But she knew he was the man of her life, which is why they had retired to that little yellow house with blue shutters in a village in the French Provence, where their children and grandchildren visited regularly."

"Back home, he told Gisele about it, burst into tears, and said he didn't want to lose her. And she, as she had done before, decided to move on and waited for the police call to give her statement and forget about the whole thing. She had decided to forgive him. So the visit to the police station would be a formality."

Gisele Pelicot developed a habit of setting the breakfast table before bed that functioned as a psychological way to skip processing bedtime. At 68, after fifty years of marriage and settling in a Provençal village, she learned her husband had been caught filming under women’s skirts in a supermarket. Police confiscated his devices and summoned them. At home he confessed, wept, and begged her not to leave. She chose to forgive and planned to treat the police appointment as a formality. The episode prompted emotional reckoning and reflection on protective coping mechanisms.

Read at english.elpais.com