The face of courage

UNTIL Sept 2, most of the world did not really know what Gisèle Pelicot looked like.

There were almost no photographs of Pelicot, a 72-year-old grandmother, online. She wasn’t on social media. No one except her friends and family knew she had an orange Louise Brooks bob and a penchant for round John Lennon sunglasses.

But by Thursday (Dec 19), as Pelicot stood with her head held high in a courtroom in Avignon, France, as the verdicts in the harrowing four-month rape trial of her ex-husband and 50 other men were read, she had become the image of bravery across the globe.