Stepping into the courtroom each day with her head held high, the former wife of a Frenchman on trial for orchestrating her mass rape in her own bed over nearly a decade has emerged as a feminist icon. With her now signature auburn bob and dark glasses, 71-year-old Gisele Pelicot has become a symbol in the fight against the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse. Her life was devastated in 2020 when she discovered that her partner of five decades had for years been secretly administering her large doses of tranquilizers to rape her and invite dozens of strangers to join him. However, she has chosen not to hide and demanded that the trial of Dominique Pelicot, 71, and 50 co-defendants since September 2 be open to the public because, as she has stated through one of her lawyers, it should be up to her alleged abusers—not her—to be ashamed.

"It's a way of saying...shame must change sides," her attorney Stephane Babonneau said as the trial commenced. Since then, feminist activists have displayed her stylized portrait by Belgian artist Aline Dessine, emblazoned with the words "Shame is changing sides," to show support at protests. The artist, who has 2.5 million followers on TikTok, has relinquished all rights to the image. Thousands protested in cities across France on Saturday in support of Gisele Pelicot and demanding an end to rape. "Gisele for all, all for Gisele," read one hand-drawn poster at a gathering in the southern city of Marseille. A day earlier, outside the courthouse in the southern town of Avignon, protester Nadege Peneau expressed her admiration for the trial's main plaintiff.

"What she's doing is very brave," Peneau said. "She's speaking up for so many children and women, and even men" who have been abused, she added. Gisele Pelicot obtained a divorce from her husband in August, who has confessed to the abuse after meticulously documenting it with photos and videos. She has relocated from the southern town of Mazan, where, in her own words, for years he treated her like "a piece of meat" or a "rag doll." She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has requested the media to use her former name as a married woman. Her lawyer Antoine Camus noted that she had transformed from a devoted wife and retiree, who enjoyed walks and choir singing, into a woman in her seventies prepared for a battle.

"I will have to fight till the end," she told the press on September 5, in her only public statement outside court in the first days of the four-month trial. "Obviously it's not an easy exercise and I can feel attempts to trap me with certain questions," she added calmly. The daughter of a military member, Gisele Pelicot was born on December 7, 1952 in Germany, returning to France with her family when she was five. When she was only nine, her mother, aged just 35, died of cancer. "In my head, I was already 15, I was already a little woman," she said, describing growing up "without much love." Her older brother Michel died of a heart attack aged 43, before her 20th birthday. She has stated that she was never one to publicly display emotions.

"In the family, we hide tears and we share laughter," one of her lawyers had reported her as saying. She met Dominique Pelicot, her future husband and rapist, in 1971. She had dreamed of becoming a hairdresser but instead studied to be a typist. After a few years of temping, she joined France's national electricity company EDF, concluding her career in a logistics service for its nuclear power plants. At home, she cared for her three children, then seven grandchildren, and did a bit of gymnastics. Only when the police caught her husband filming up women's skirts in a supermarket in 2020 did she uncover the true reason behind her troubling memory lapses. Camus, her lawyer, stated that his client "never wanted to be a role model."

"She just wants all this not to be in vain," he said.