The Tamesis
“I was married to a wonderful man for 40 years,” she continued, subtracting the last 10 years of her 50-year marriage. “Friends would ask me: ‘Doesn’t he have a brother?’ He cooked, he DIYed, he was athletic, he was neat—he had so many good qualities.” When the truth came out, people would say to her: “Mrs. Peliko, you were influenced by him.” But she told me that wasn’t the case. “Never. Chemically, yes, but psychologically no. That’s the scariest thing. I’d rather he were a bastard so I could say to myself, ‘You know. You know he’s a horrible person.'”
During the trial, the psychiatrist who first examined Dominic Pellicott argued that he had a split personality: that he was “split in two.” While not all experts agree, it makes sense for Gisele. “There’s an A side and a B side,” she explains. “I had never seen the B-side, I only found out during the trial.”
In December 2024, Dominique Pelicot was sentenced to 20 years in prison, the maximum sentence for rape in France. In her book, Gisele lists the questions she would ask her husband if she were to visit him there – something many people advised her not to do. Questions included: “Did you abuse our daughter?” “Was the night you came home crying the same night you tried to rape that young woman?” “Did you kill someone?”
“I didn’t go to jail and see him,” she says now. “There was a trial, and… actually, it did take some time before I could see him again. But I tried to understand. I told myself: He had the key. He could have said, ‘I’m going to get help, something’s not right, why am I like this?'”
“Do you think your ex-husband is capable of killing someone?” I asked.
“I really hope he doesn’t have the ability to do this,” she said. “I don’t have an answer. Because yes, there is suspicion – people think he did it, but I hope he is not guilty. First of all, my thoughts are with the family – I think only the mother is still alive, that young woman died 30 years ago. I know her body will probably be exhumed. One thing I hope for: that they find the DNA of the killer.”
If it was really her ex-husband, it would be “another fall into the abyss.” But for now, Gisele said: “My memory will remain. At some point, you rise from the ashes, but you can’t erase the past. It’s part of who we are.”
Mazen’s crimes can be viewed as two intertwined cases: one domestic and the other social. In the first example, the perpetrator is a man who could be considered a monster. In the second case, rapists are so numerous that any attempt to pathologize them is futile. The size and scope of Dominic Pellicott’s criminal associates illustrate how banal their actions were, and how easily society condoned them. “Every day people thank me for my courage,” Gisele told the court. “I want to tell them that it’s not courage, but a deep desire and determination to change our patriarchal, sexist society.”
