French rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot has disclosed that she received a personal letter of admiration from Queen Camilla, with the British monarch praising her for the courage and dignity she demonstrated throughout one of the most closely watched criminal trials in modern French history.
The contents of the letter were revealed for the first time Friday during an extensive BBC Newsnight interview with presenter Victoria Derbyshire, published ahead of Pelicot’s forthcoming memoir. Both Camilla and Pelicot gave permission for the correspondence to be shared with the broadcaster.
A palace aide told Newsweek that Camilla had been “tremendously affected” by the case and wrote entirely on her own instigation, motivated by her long-term commitment to survivors of domestic and sexual violence. “She wanted to recognize Pelicot’s extraordinary dignity and courage,” the aide said. “She helped highlight a very significant societal problem despite all the personal suffering she’d been through. So, as a long-term supporter of survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, the Queen wrote to Madame Pelicot privately. It was very much her instigation and determination to write to express support from the highest level.”
In the letter, Camilla wrote: “I very much wanted to write to express my heartfelt admiration for the courage, grace and dignity with which you have faced the horrific crimes committed against you.” She told Pelicot that she had “inspired women across the globe” and “created a powerful legacy that will change the narrative around shame, forever,” adding: “Thank you for all that you have done. You are very much in my thoughts and prayers, and I hope that you will now be able to rest and recover from this devastating ordeal.”
Pelicot, 73, described her reaction with characteristic restraint. “It was an honour for me to receive this letter. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I was overwhelmed that the Queen could send me this letter. Although my words touched the whole world, I wasn’t expecting a letter from the Court of England. I felt moved and very honoured that she had become aware of what had happened to me. I am grateful to her,” she told Derbyshire.
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The Newsnight interview offered a rare and revealing portrait of a woman who has refused to allow her ordeal to define her future. Asked about her emotional state, Pelicot said she had felt “crushed by horror” on first discovering the full scale of her husband’s crimes. “Something exploded inside me,” she said. “It was like a tsunami.”
Throughout the interview, Pelicot appeared composed and assured. When shown video messages from French women filmed by Newsnight, thanking her for choosing an open trial, she wiped away tears for the first time. “It touches me enormously because these are the faces I met during the trial,” she said. “I saw them putting up posters, I saw their collages, I saw the banners.”
The crimes that brought Pelicot to international attention spanned nearly a decade. Her former husband, Dominique Pelicot, repeatedly drugged her into unconsciousness at their home in Mazan in southern France and recruited men he met through online chatrooms to assault her while she was incapacitated. He filmed more than 200 such attacks without her knowledge. The abuse came to light only after he was apprehended at a supermarket for secretly filming underneath women’s skirts.
The trial, which concluded in December 2024, resulted in the conviction of 50 men on charges of rape or sexual offenses. Forty-seven were found guilty of rape, two of attempted rape, and two of sexual assault. They were collectively sentenced to 428 years in prison. Dominique Pelicot received the maximum sentence of 20 years.
Pelicot’s decision to waive her anonymity as a sexual violence survivor and insist on an open trial was one of the defining gestures of the proceedings. She said her aim was to make shame transfer from the victim to the perpetrators, a phrase that became a rallying call for supporters who gathered outside the Avignon courthouse every day of the 15-week trial carrying banners and signs expressing gratitude.
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In the Newsnight interview, she recalled phoning each of her three children, David, Caroline, and Florian, to tell them what their father had done, describing those calls as possibly the most painful experience of her life. “I heard my daughter scream,” she said of Caroline’s reaction. “It was almost inhuman, that scream.”
The interview serves as a companion to Pelicot’s forthcoming memoir, written with journalist Judith Perrignon, titled “A Hymn To Life: Shame Has to Change Sides.” Extracts were published by French newspaper Le Monde ahead of the book’s release.
Camilla has spent decades building a record on domestic and sexual violence advocacy, making it one of the most consistent pillars of her royal charitable work. In an ITV documentary, she vowed to continue campaigning to end domestic violence “until I am able to no more.” She has championed practical support initiatives for survivors, including the provision of personal care kits for those who have been attacked, a program she originally helped establish and which has since been revived.
The Queen’s outreach to Pelicot extends that advocacy beyond Britain’s borders, offering personal recognition from one of the world’s most prominent public figures to a woman who transformed private suffering into a global conversation about consent, complicity, and the distribution of shame in sexual violence cases.
