Gisele Pelicot is a hero.

Her husband, Dominique Pelicot, has recently admitted in a French court that he drugged her to sleep, raped her, and recruited dozens of men to come into their marital bed and rape her too, night after night, for a decade.

We know Dominique Pelicot’s name and the shocking details of the horrific crimes committed by him and his cohort of fellow rapists – most of them local to the quaint French town they lived in – because Gisele Pelicot bravely waived her right to anonymity in the trial, enabling the details of the case to be heard in public. She chose to go public with her story at an incredible cost and burden to herself because she wanted to make an example of her abusers and deter other men from committing similar crimes, thinking they can get away with them.

This admirable 72-year-old woman, who has been through unimaginable pain and suffering, went a step further last week and convinced the judge overseeing the case to make the video recordings of the rapes available to the public and the media.

Gisele Pelicot’s lawyers called the decision to make the footage public a “victory” and said, “If these same hearings, through their publicity, help prevent other women from having to go through this, then [Gisele Pelicot] will find meaning in her suffering.”

So yes, Gisele Pelicot is a modern day hero. By making sure the world knows who her husband is and what he did, she became a true feminist icon – a symbol not of victimhood but women’s resistance to male violence. She took a stand not only for herself but for all women, and she will long be remembered and respected for it.

The courage and bravery of Gisele Pelicot filled me with pride and renewed my trust in the strength of women and the power of sisterhood. But the image of her taking on her dozens of rapists alone also raised in my mind a haunting question: Where are the men?........

© Al Jazeera