Shame has changed sides

People like Gisèle Pelicot and Gino Cecchettin command attention through sheer presence, carrying themselves with dignity and restraint. The violence they endured turned them, against their will, into public figures, and they have since chosen to use that visibility to push for transformative change. Ilenia Caito, who conducts the interview, opens with a clarification: this is not the place to revisit the details of their stories, which the press and the courts have already dissected. Instead, it is a space for listening, to resist turning pain into spectacle.

Then something happens that rarely occurs at large, packed public events: the audience falls silent. The whole crows rises to their feet and applauds, many of them in tears.

What does it actually mean to make shame change sides?

For Gino Cecchettin, father of Giulia, murdered by her ex-boyfriend aged 22, on 11 November 2023, any conversation about shame should begin elsewhere, with violent men confronting their own conscience. That kind of reflection remains almost unthinkable for most men today, he argues, because it would require them to recognise how deeply certain behaviours are rooted in patriarchy.

Only a few are willing to examine their relationship with women from that perspective. "I found myself living through an unbearable grief without knowing where it came from," he admits, "because until that moment I had never had to question gender-based violence." Cecchettin speaks at length about how living through grief, however devastating, can be redemptive, particularly when the loss of a child is so immense that the Italian language has no single word to describe it. He also points to a bitter irony familiar to people like him who put their trauma at the service of others: however they express their suffering, it is judged. Show too much, and you are accused of exploiting your loss; show too little, and you are read as cold.

Pelicot is unequivocal on this point: “I know where I come from and I know where I am going. I do not have to prove anything to anyone." For years, she was subjected to chemical submission and repeated sexual abuse by strangers whom her husband — whom she refers to, as a deliberate political choice, only as "Monsieur Pelicot" — recruited online. Her story is intersected by two recurring themes found in every account of gender-based violence: possessive jealousy, exercised by her husband over her, and the denial of the victim’s consent. "The men who raped me while I was unconscious had my husband's consent, and for them that was enough," she recalls. "To them, I was an object."

After reporting the crimes, Gisèle Pelicot chose to stand behind an open criminal trial, to be an inspiration to other women. However, as she stands powerfully, shame no longer belongs to her.

But her example has resonated with men too: "So many fathers, brothers, husbands stop me in the street to thank me for helping them change the way they look at women."