There’s something quietly powerful about watching two women sit down over tea and speak truth to power, even when that power is wrapped in centuries of tradition and protocol.
Last Monday at Clarence House, Queen Camilla did exactly that. She met with Gisèle Pelicot, the French survivor who became an international symbol of resilience after choosing to break silence on one of the most horrifying cases of sexual abuse in recent memory. The two women talked for about 30 minutes, and honestly, the symbolism here is impossible to ignore.
Pelicot, 73, was in London wrapping up her book tour for “A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides.” The memoir itself is brutal. It details how her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, systematically drugged her and allowed dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious. Over nearly a decade. The scope of that cruelty is almost incomprehensible.
The Weight of Speaking Out
What makes Pelicot extraordinary isn’t just what happened to her, but what she chose to do about it. She waived her anonymity, a radical act that defied the shame that typically silences survivors. She declared, with the kind of clarity that cuts through noise, that shame belongs with the abusers, not the abused.
Fifty men were convicted of rape or sexual offenses after the trial in Avignon wrapped last December. Her ex-husband got 20 years.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Camilla told Pelicot something that speaks volumes: “I’ve met so many survivors of rape and sexual abuse I never thought I could be shocked by anything anymore, but I was shocked at your case. It left me speechless.”
The Queen had read the entire memoir in just two days. Two days. That’s not casual consumption. That’s urgency.
A Royal Reckoning
Timing matters here. This meeting happened against a backdrop of serious institutional pressure on the monarchy itself. The Andrew-Epstein scandal has kept questions about accountability and privilege very much alive in public consciousness. The royal family hasn’t exactly emerged from that situation looking clean, and the media hasn’t let them forget it.
Which is why this moment with Pelicot carries weight beyond just a nice photo opportunity. It’s a statement, intentional or not. A royal household trying to demonstrate where it actually stands on violence against women.
Camilla has a long history of campaigning against domestic violence and sexual abuse. She wasn’t showing up for this meeting as a performative gesture. The letter she wrote to Pelicot last year, praising her “extraordinary dignity and courage,” now hangs framed in Pelicot’s office. That’s not something you forget or fabricate.
The Courage in Visibility
What strikes me most is that Pelicot could have stayed quiet. She could have hidden. Society tells survivors to do exactly that, to carry their trauma privately, to spare everyone else the discomfort. Instead, she chose the opposite path entirely.
She walked into that Royal Festival Hall in London where nearly 2,500 people gathered to hear her story. Actors like Kate Winslet and Kristin Scott Thomas read passages from her memoir. And then she sat across from Queen Camilla and spoke, through an interpreter, about finding “incredible strength” from supporters.
That’s not just personal courage. That’s institutional disruption. That’s someone saying, out loud and publicly, that the systems that allow abuse to flourish need to change.
The real question isn’t whether this meeting matters for the monarchy’s image. It’s whether moments like this actually shift how we as a society respond to survivors who speak up. Do we make space for their stories? Do we listen, really listen, the way Camilla claims she did?
