This was an extraordinary response to unimaginable crimes. Yet true change will only come when men engage with the culture that led us here

Women who are raped are in many countries – perhaps in most – violated and abused again by the legal system. And yet during her reckoning with the crimes of her husband and 51 other men, all now found guilty in a historic set of verdicts, Gisèle Pelicot seized control of the narrative, becoming a hero in France and around the world.

After she discovered her husband had been drugging her and offering her up online to strangers to come and rape while she was unconscious, Gisèle left her home, her marriage and the story she had told herself about her life, and spent some time in seclusion.

Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility

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