One November day in 2020, Giselle Pelico was called to a local French police station and life as she knew it ended.

Evidence mounted that her husband of 50 years had been secretly drugging and raping her

and inviting dozens of strangers into their home to abuse her for nearly a decade.

Her resilience and resolve in a trial of over 50 men later led to a

reckoning about sexual abuse and revealed the power of one woman's voice. I met with Pelico this

week for a rare interview to discuss the publication of her memoir, A Hymn to Life, with the subtitle,

shame has to change sides.

And I began by asking her what it's like for her to now have her story out in the world.

I thought that my book could be useful, and to tell my story could tell the others who are victims of sexual violence,

that we have the resources within us to get back up. And through

my story where I write about a family saga of three generations of women that gave me the strength

and this happiness in life, because they also live through disease and grief. But I always saw them

as strong. It is really this happiness that did not leave me throughout my childhood, and this

resilience that is something within me.

The more you speak about it, does it get easier at all to talk about all of this?

Easier, I don't think so, because I lived 50 years with Mr. Pelico and it was my choice to live with him.

And I had three children and always thought that these 50 years were not all a lie.

To be able to continue living, I have to rebuild a new perspective and almost invent it and also understand who I am. Before we go into more detail about your case, tell us about the man that you thought you were marrying.

Because as you note in the book, you were very young when you both met. You were escaping your own traumas. He was escaping a very abusive household as well.

Who did you believe you were marrying 50 years ago? So when we met, we were two 19-year-old kids.

He had very difficult moments, a tyrannical and authoritarian father,

and I had a stepmother who was not loving, not loving at all.

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