I’ll never forget the morning news broke about Gisèle Pelicot. Lying in bed, reading her story on my news app, I lay there frozen and hardly breathing. The horrifying betrayal she faced for decades with her husband left me shell-shocked. I couldn’t believe what I had read. But as I continued to lay there, nauseated, I realized that I had read versions of Gisèle’s story over and over and over and over.

The story of women having their bodily autonomy and dignity violated is one of the oldest stories there is, stretching across time, space, and medium. From history books, religious doctrine, and mythological tales, it is a tale as old as time.

Throughout history, survivors of sexual violence have faced attempts to silence their stories. Yet two powerful narratives—one ancient and one modern—demonstrate how a survivor's voice can triumph over any attempt to suppress it.

Gisèle Pelicot

In 2020, Gisèle Pelicot discovered that her then-husband of over 50 years, Dominique Pelicot, had been drugging her with sedatives and allowing over 50 other men to rape her while she was unconscious. All the while, her husband filmed these assaults and shared them on pornographic websites. Dominique Pelicot was only brought to justice for his actions when the police were called after he was attempting to film up women’s skirts in a store. This arrest lead the police to find tens of thousands of photos and videos of his unconscious wife being raped by men he invited over, leading to a high-profile trial that resulted in her ex-husband's 20-year prison sentence and the conviction of multiple accomplices.

When Gisèle Pelicot took the witness stand, her words resonated far beyond the courtroom. "I wanted all women victims of rape to say, 'Madame Pelicot did it, we can do it too.'" Her testimony not only brought her attackers to justice but became a rallying cry for survivors everywhere. In February 2025, Time Magazine named her one of Time’s Women of the Year.

Philomela

Centuries earlier, the mythological figure Philomela in Ovid’s Metamorphoses presents another harrowing story of sexual assault and silencing.

After years of marriage, King Tereus’s wife Procne asked him to escort her sister Philomela from Athens for a visit. But when Tereus saw Philomela, he knew he wanted to rape her, as Stephanie McCarter translates Ovid’s Latin, “Tereus looks at her and through his gaze rehearses his assault.” After the assault, Philomela angrily tells him that she will tell everyone what he has done to her. To prevent her from revealing his crime, he cut out her tongue and imprisoned her, telling Procne that her sister had died. Philomela managed to weave a tapestry depicting the assault and sent it to her sister.

Even after her attacker cut out her tongue, she found another way to speak her truth. Through the art of weaving, she created a tapestry that told her story, proving that voice transcends spoken word. Upon discovering the truth, Procne rescued Philomela and, in revenge, together they killed Tereus's son Itys, cooked him, and served him to his father.

Tools Used by Assaulters to Silence Victims

Both women's stories reveal a timeless truth: perpetrators understand the devastating power of a survivor's voice. That's why they resort to various tactics—from physical violence to modern methods like non-disclosure agreements—to maintain their victims' silence. But the tools used to silence these two women—drugs and a knife—could not take away their most powerful tool: their voice. That voice can never be taken away.

Though Philomela is fictional, her story reflects reality. Bodily mutilation after assault—whether cutting out tongues or throwing acid in victims' faces to permanently alter their physical identity—is neither new nor fictional.

Though her rapist and captor cut out her tongue, Philomela refused to be silenced. As Ovid writes in line 648, "Her hand has become her voice." She not only used gestures to communicate but wove a tapestry that revealed to her sister Procne what had happened and where she was being held, resulting in Tereus’s swift destruction by ruining his line of succession.

The impact of a woman telling her story is profound.

Gisèle's testimony resulted in a 20-year prison sentence for her ex-husband, permanently marking him as a convicted sex trafficker. Her story lives on through digital media, creating a modern tapestry that continues to inspire change in how society addresses sexual violence.

Othering and Distancing

Yet despite their horror, both stories face a subtle "othering," distracting the observer from the fact this violence proliferates all around the world.

In both cases, there exists a misguided belief that perpetrators of such horrific acts exist somewhere out there—that such things don't happen close to home.

In the US, some social media users have dismissed Gisèle's story, saying, "Oh well, that's awful, but that's in France, not here"—as if such crimes don't occur on U.S. soil.

The reality is different. According to the Polaris Project, in the United States alone, over 16,500 trafficking victims were identified in 2021. These aren't distant problems—they're happening in our own communities.

Society's tendency to distance itself from such horrors isn’t a modern phenomenon, the ancients did it, too.

Ovid distances his homeland of Rome from Tereus by portraying him as a foreigner from a land prone to rape.

He describes Tereus's lust as:

"burning as when somebody sets dry leaves aflame," adding that "inborn passion goads him, too. That region's people are disposed to lust. He burns with his vice and his nation's."

Ovid blames Tereus's Thracian origins rather than acknowledging that such men exist worldwide, and in his homeland.

Whether it's dismissing Gisèle's story as something that "happens in France" or Ovid's portrayal of Tereus as a foreign barbarian, we often try to convince ourselves that such violence happens somewhere else, to someone else.

Fighting against Shame

The specter of shame haunts both women and all sexual assault survivors—from their rapists, disbelieving friends and family, the justice system, lawyers, judges, and social media. Though the ancient Philomela didn't face modern institutions, she confronted similar challenges: potential disbelief, gaslighting, and centuries of writers reinterpreting her story.

The burden of shame persisted long after the assaults. In Philomela's story, Ovid reveals the lasting consequences for ancient women whose rapes became known. After the horrific assault, Philomela's emotions change quickly from shame to fury.

She confronts Tereus:

“What barbarism, cruel man! What...of your affections for my sister? What of my virginity and right to marry? You've upturned everything! I'm now my sister's rival. You're husband to us both. I'm due an enemy's vengeance. Why not kill me, traitor?...I could have been a ghost untouched by crime!"

Her life and reputation, not his, hang in the balance.

After the horrific rape is described in detail by Ovid, Philomela transforms from shame to rage, telling Tereus,

“...one day I'll make you pay. I'll cast off shame and tell your deeds. If I can get to people, I'll go to them. Or if I'm trapped in forests, my voice will fill the forests—stones will know. Heaven will hear, and any god that lives there."

Driven by anger and fear of exposure, Tereus draws his knife and cuts out her tongue After this threat.

Even still, Philomela’s and Gisèle‘s voices dissolve the shame society would impose on them.

As Gisèle powerfully declared during the trial,

"I want those women to say: 'Mrs. Pelicot did it, we can too.' When you're raped, there is shame, and it's not for us to have shame, it's for them [the rapists]."

Perhaps most powerfully, both women's stories demonstrate how to reclaim narrative control from shame. And for that, I am grateful to them both, their stories will continue to haunt and inspire me.

Their Lasting Impact

Both women wove their stories in ways that created lasting impact.

Philomela created a physical object filled with powerful imagery. Her tapestry would endure even after her final word was spoken.

Through her public trial, Gisèle's words transformed from oral testimony into a permanent record, living on through the internet in blogs, articles, social media posts, and future books. Through this extensive documentation, Gisèle has woven her own powerful tapestry that will catalyze change in how society addresses rape culture.

Gisèle Pelicot’s and Philomela’s stories remind us that while perpetrators may try to silence survivors, the truth has a way of emerging—whether through spoken testimony or woven tapestry.

The voice, in all its forms, prevails.

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