Gisèle Pelicot, whose former husband recruited dozens of strangers online to sexually assault and rape her while she was drugged, will return to the courtroom on Monday for an appeal by one of the men convicted. Out of 51 defendants, he is the only one still contesting the verdict.
The 51 men, including Pelicot's former husband Dominique, were convicted at the initial trial that ended in December 2024.
The nearly four-month trial turned Gisèle Pelicot, 72, into an international icon after she waived her right to anonymity and sat defiantly through hearings that replayed her ordeal in graphic detail.
She is back in court to attend the appeal of Husamettin Dogan, a 44-year-old construction worker who was sentenced to nine years for aggravated rape. His new trial opens on Monday afternoon in the southern city of Nimes, and is expected to last four days.
Gisèle Pelicot will take the stand on Wednesday morning.
"She would have been happy to forgo this ordeal again," one of her lawyers, Antoine Camus, told French news agency AFP.
"But she is taking part to make clear that rape is rape, that there is no such thing as a small rape."
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Lone appeal
Dogan is the only man to maintain his appeal, after 16 others who pledged to do so dropped out.
"I'm not a rapist," he told the first trial. "This is too much for me to bear. He's her husband. I never thought that guy could do this to his wife."
Gisèle Pelicot was heavily drugged by her husband over a 10-year period to be raped and sexually abused by strangers while unconscious, mostly at the family home in the southern town of Mazan.
Dominique Pelicot has not appealed his 20-year prison sentence and has no intention of doing so, his lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro, told AFP.
She stressed that her client's first words at the original trial were: "I am a rapist and all the men in this room are rapists."
He will be brought to court from prison, where he remains in solitary confinement, to be cross-examined as a witness on the second day of Dogan's appeal trial.
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Claimed consent
In the first trial, several of the accused claimed they were lured into believing they were taking part in a consensual sex game, an argument which did not convince the court.
Most of the men tried alongside Dominique Pelicot, aged 27 to 74, were convicted of rape. They received sentences ranging from three years in prison including two suspended – reserved for a pensioner tried for sexual assault – to 15 years in prison for a man who raped Gisèle Pelicot six times.
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Dogan said that in June 2019, he had met a man online who presented himself as a member of a "libertine couple" whose wife "pretended to be asleep".
That same evening, after abusing Gisèle Pelicot's inert body for at least half an hour, he purportedly only realised that something was wrong when he heard her snoring. He claimed to have left in a hurry but did not deem it necessary to alert the authorities.
If Dogan loses his appeal, he risks having his sentence stiffened. A verdict is expected by Thursday.
(with AFP)
