Frenchwoman Gisele Pelicot, whose ex-husband recruited dozens of strangers to rape and sexually assault her while drugged, attended court Monday for an appeal by one man who insisted he “never intended” to rape her.
Fifty-one men, including her former husband Dominique Pelicot, were convicted after an initial months-long trial that ended in December last year and turned Gisele Pelicot into a global icon.
Husamettin Dogan, 44, is the only defendant to have filed an appeal and maintained it, prompting the fresh trial that started on Monday.
When asked by the chief judge whether he accepted the charge he was convicted of, Dogan said: “I am here because I never wanted to rape this lady, whom I respect.”
During the initial trial, Gisele Pelicot, 72, waived her right to anonymity and her dignified conduct made her a feminist hero and a symbol of women’s fight against male sexual violence.
On Monday, she arrived to applause at the court in the southern city of Nimes, accompanied by her son Florian — one of three children she had with Dominique Pelicot.
She shook hands with supporters, but did not make any statement. She is expected to give testimony to the court on Wednesday.
– ‘Ordeal’ –
Dogan, who has arthritis and is not in custody, made a more discreet entrance.
Wearing a cap, face mask and dark glasses, he walked in using a walking stick, an AFP video journalist saw.
The appeal trial is scheduled to last a maximum of four days.
Dominique Pelicot will be brought from prison, where he remains in solitary confinement, for cross-examination on Tuesday. He is not appealing his 20-year prison sentence.
One of Gisele Pelicot’s lawyers said that she would have been happy to forgo “this ordeal” but was not afraid of being put into the spotlight again.
“She understands the attention given to her case, which, beyond her own person, has universal significance,” Antoine Camus told AFP.
“It challenges us all to think about gender relations and men’s relationship with their sexuality.”
Over a nine-year period, Dominique Pelicot drugged his then wife to be raped and sexually abused by strangers while unconscious, mostly at the family home in the southern French town of Mazan.
In December, Dogan was sentenced to nine years in prison. But his incarceration was delayed for health reasons.
“I’m not a rapist,” the 44-year-old construction worker said during the first trial.
On Monday, he told the court he only learnt after his arrest that Gisele Pelicot had been unconscious at the time he penetrated her.
The rest of Monday’s hearing was taken up by experts giving their professional evaluation of Dogan, who was described as having an addiction to sex but knowing right from wrong.
– ‘He hears threats’ –
Sixteen other men appealed their verdicts but later abandoned their bids.
Dominique Pelicot’s lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told AFP that, in prison, her client speaks to no one and writes a lot.
“When he is inside his cell, he hears things through the window, he hears his name being mentioned a lot, he hears threats,” Zavarro said.
At the first trial, many of the men attempted to shift the blame onto Dominique Pelicot, claiming they were lured into believing they were taking part in a consensual sex game, an argument which did not convince the court.
Most of his co-defendants, aged 27 to 74, were convicted of rape.
They received sentences ranging from three years in prison, including two suspended — the lightest term which went to a pensioner tried for sexual assault — up to 15 years in prison for a man who raped Gisele Pelicot six times.
Dogan said that in December 2019, he met a man online who presented himself as a member of a “libertine couple” whose wife “pretended to be asleep”.
He visited them the same evening and abused an inert Gisele Pelicot for at least half an hour. He said he only realised that something was wrong when he heard her snoring.
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