Celebrity
Queen Camilla wrote to rape survivor Gisèle Pelicot to praise her ‘extraordinary courage’
By Victoria Ward
The Queen wrote to Gisèle Pelicot to praise her “extraordinary dignity and courage”, it has emerged.
Her Majesty, a long-time campaigner against domestic violence, was “tremendously affected” by the horrific four-month rape trial that took place in Avignon, southern France, last year, an aide said.
In December, Ms Pelicot’s husband, Dominique, was jailed for 20 years after he secretly drugged his wife and invited scores of men he met online to rape her 200 times in her own home over a decade, filming every act.
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Ms Pelicot, 72, boldly waived her right to anonymity to face her husband of 50 years in court, listening calmly as his shocking crimes against her were laid bare.
Her bravery in turning the tables on her tormentors has seen her hailed a feminist icon and one of the world’s most influential women.
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Ms Pelicot has said: “I wanted all woman victims of rape – not just when they have been drugged, rape exists at all levels – I want those women to say: ‘Madame Pelicot did it, we can do it too.'”
The Queen, 77, was as shocked by the unimaginable abuse as the rest of the world, a palace source revealed.
The aide told Newsweek: “She was tremendously affected by the Madame Pelicot case in France and that lady’s extraordinary dignity and courage as she put herself in the public eye, because, as she rightly put it, why should she be made to feel like a victim or hide away in shame?
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“And, of course, 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.”
The Queen has for decades sought to use her platform to highlight such “heinous crimes”, working with survivors to help remove the shroud of shame and become a catalyst for change.
She is patron of the SafeLives charity and has made many official and secret visits to women’s refuges. Last year, she backed calls for a domestic abuse campaign to be rolled out in schools nationwide and said that young people should be taught “respect” as part of the drive to “obliterate” such violence.
The Queen recently vowed to keep on fighting to end the scourge of domestic abuse until she is “able to no more”.
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In a powerful ITV documentary released last October, she spoke extensively about what inspired her long-running campaign and the courage of the survivors that propelled her on.
She acknowledged that the very concept of someone in her position taking part in such a documentary in the 1950s would have been inconceivable because domestic abuse was a taboo subject and “people just blocked their ears”.
But despite the strides made since then, she insisted that there was much more to be done. One in four women and one in six men in England and Wales currently experience some form of domestic abuse, with an estimated three women a week taking their own lives as a result.
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