Gisèle Pelicot was scheduled to return to court in France on Monday, 10 months after a mass trial in which 51 men were convicted, most for raping her while she was deliberately sedated. The case deeply shocked the country and established her as an international feminist icon.
One of those men, Husamettin Dogan, 44, has appealed both the ruling and the sentence. The second trial, to be heard in the Court of Appeal in Nîmes, in France’s south, will be decided by three judges and a nine-person jury.
Ms. Pelicot, now 72, is not required to be present, but her lawyers said she planned to attend the entire process, as she did the last trial. She also plans to waive her right to a private proceeding once again, they said.
“She feels it’s her responsibility to be there,” said Stéphane Babonneau, one of her two lawyers. “She says, ‘I started something; I have to end it.’”
The original criminal trial last fall shocked the nation. By opening the trial to the public, Ms. Pelicot — who has since divorced her husband, Dominique Pelicot — enabled the country to witness her intimate horror and, in the process, confront the pervasiveness of rape and misogyny in France.
Over months, local newspapers and radios recounted how her once-beloved husband of 50 years had spent almost a decade mixing sleeping pills into her food and drink, and then inviting strangers he met online to join him in raping her limp, snoring body.
During their investigation, the police found thousands of videos and photographs that Mr. Pelicot had taken and assiduously edited and cataloged of the encounters, which officers used to track down the accused.
Ms. Pelicot also pushed for those videos to be played in court, as irrefutable evidence. Her other lawyer, Antoine Camus, said she wanted the country “to look rape straight in the eyes.”
The majority of the men said they were tricked by Mr. Pelicot into believing that they were taking part in a playful threesome and that Ms. Pelicot was pretending to be asleep. Mr. Pelicot, who admitted his guilt and painted himself as the court’s truth teller, said all of them had been fully informed.
The court found them all guilty and handed them sentences ranging from three years to 20 years, the maximum, for Mr. Pelicot.
The convicted men were dubbed Monsieur Tout-le-monde — or Mr. Everyone — by the French media because of how varied and seemingly ordinary they were. They ranged in age from 27 to 74 and presented a cross section of small-town France: truck drivers, trade workers, a nurse, an I.T. expert working for a bank.
Though 17 originally appealed, all but Mr. Dogan dropped their cases. Moments before the ruling was delivered last December, Mr. Dogan stood up in court and offered his final words: “This case has made me sick. I am not a rapist. Thank you.”
Mr. Dogan hopes his case will get more careful attention, separated from the crush of the other defendants, whose cases were heard during the original trial in rounds of five to seven a week, said Jean-Marc Darrigade, one of his two lawyers.
Mr. Darrigade said this case would not focus on whether he penetrated Ms. Pelicot, but at what point he realized she was not in a normal state and what actions he took.
Mr. Dogan lives with his wife and their son in the south of France, about an hour’s drive from the Pelicots’ former house. He has worked as a plasterer, his lawyer said, and has a criminal record for drug trafficking.
While in pretrial detention, Mr. Dogan was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. He has remained free since his conviction, as the court was searching for a prison to accommodate his condition, and before it found one, he appealed.
Many lawyers said that in appealing, Mr. Dogan risked an even longer sentence, since jury trials have the reputation of handing out more severe punishments.
The maximum sentence for aggravated rape in France is 20 years.
Catherine Porter is an international reporter for The Times, covering France. She is based in Paris.
The post Appeal Trial Opens in Gisèle Pelicot Rape Case appeared first on New York Times.
