Gisèle Pelicot sent a message to women victims of sexist and sexual violence on the occasion of International Women’s Rights Day. She was designated “the most influential woman of 2025” by the magazine The Independent.
It is a message for all women victims of sexist and sexual violence. Gisèle Pelicot, who has become an icon of the struggle for women’s rights since the Mazan rape trial, wished to send a message of support for women. Designated “the most influential woman of 2025” by the British magazine The Independentit was by her lawyer Stéphane Badonneau that she wanted to dedicate “this recognition to all the victims, and more particularly to those who fight alone to have their rights and the truth recognized by the courts”.
“To these victims, who most often remain in the shadows, Gisèle wishes to express his admiration”, believing “that it is they who are the real heroines”, and assures “that they must know that they will never be alone”.
Gisèle Pelicot is the only Frenchman on the list of the 50 most influential women of 2025 by the British newspaper. She is followed by Princess Kate Middleton, who revealed to suffer from cancer in 2024, going against the policy of secrecy usually observed in the royal family, and the British Minister of Finance Rachel Reeves, the first woman to occupy this function.
Gisèle Pelicot is also part of the list of women of the year 2025 of the time, in its edition which will appear on March 10.
“Shame changes camp”
Gisèle Pelicot has become one of the faces of the feminist struggle, and not only in France, when she refused the camera for the Mazan trial so that “shame changes camp”. Her ex-husband was accused of having drugged her and raped her for several years, leaving her at the mercy of around fifty men recruited on the Internet to rape her in turn. The trial lasted three months, during which his privacy and intimacy were revealed in the world. She was accused of lie and libertinism, but remained worthy for the duration of this trial which had a global echo. Dominique Pelicot was found guilty and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment. He did not appeal. The other 50 accused men were mainly found guilty of rape and sentenced to sentences of three to fifteen years in prison.
The daughter of the former couple, Caroline Daria, filed a complaint against her father for “administration of psychoactive substances” and “sexual abuse”, three months after the end of the trial. Photos of her naked and unconscious had been found on Dominique Pelicot’s computer. He still denies these accusations.