Ms. Pelicot’s story is one that I learned about in the news after the court hearing against her husband and other perpetrators began. She is from France. I was fascinated with the knowledge that she had requested the courtroom be opened to the public at the Palais de Justice. The title “Shame Has to Change Sides,” coincides with this. She had heard this term from a woman’s group, I believe she says in her book. It meant that instead of her facing the humiliation of being alone in the courtroom, with all of her perpetrators, instead, the room would be filled with journalists (from around the world) and women wanting to hear her story. These people, who flocked in daily once the word got out, were now facing the perpetrators, so they could not be anonymous. This was a very brave action on her part, especially as these people would also be witness to the humiliation and degradation that was done to her in more than a decade. The book she writes, “A Hymn to Life,” gives us the details of her fifty year marriage to the “monster.”
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We three Leos’ have read your books which were handed down from one to another. First, it was Lia, who once was a little toddler that crossed the border from Hungary in 1956 with mommy and daddy. She was sick and they were granted passage on a plane to get her to America more quickly, I believe from an Austrian camp. Then it was her mother, Marika neni who read it next. Marika neni has told me her story many times of coming to this country. She was a woman I grew up with, who was like an aunt but more of a sister to my stepfather. Lia was our babysitter in my formative years. Marika neni and my stepfather met at Camp Kilmer in New Jersey, when a group of refugees decided on Wheeling for their new home.
Jeannine Vegh 