Gisèle Pelicot tells mass rape trial ‘it’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them’

Woman who was raped by her husband and allegedly abused by 50 other men says she is driven by determination to change society'

• Who are the men accused in Pelicot case?

Gisele Pelicot, the French woman who has become a feminist hero for insisting that the rape trial of her ex-husband and 50 other men should be held in public, has told a court in southern France she was driven by her desire to change society and expose rape culture.

I am a woman who is totally destroyed, and I don't know how I'm going to rebuild myself. I'm 72 soon and I'm not sure my life will be long enough to recover from this," said the former logistics manager, who was repeatedly unknowingly sedated and raped by her then husband, Dominique Pelicot, 71.