Feminist Icon Gisele Pelicot Back In Court As Man Appeals Rape Conviction

Frenchwoman Gisele Pelicot, whose ex-husband recruited dozens of strangers online to sexually assault and rape her while drugged, arrived in court Monday for an appeal trial triggered by the bid of one man to overturn his conviction.

Fifty-one men, including her former husband Dominique Pelicot, were convicted at the nearly four-month initial trial that ended in December and turned Gisele Pelicot into a global icon.

Gisele Pelicot, 72, waived her right to anonymity and her dignified and quietly defiant conduct throughout the trial made her a feminist hero and a symbol of the fight of women against male sexual violence.

She arrived to applause at the court in the southern city of Nimes, dressed in a pink jacket and with her son Florian by her side, one of the three children she had with Dominique Pelicot. She warmly shook hands with her supporters, but did not make any statement.

Only one of the men, Husamettin Dogan, has maintained an appeal against his conviction.

Hiding behind a cap, face mask and dark glasses, Dogan -- who suffers from arthritis -- made a much more discreet entrance up the court's steps, leaning on a walking stick, an AFP video journalist saw.

The trial, for which 100 journalists from around the world have sought accreditation, is expected 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.

Gisele Pelicot is due to speak on Wednesday.

One of her lawyers said Gisele Pelicot would have been happy to forgo "this ordeal" but was not afraid of being thrust 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, Gisele Pelicot was heavily drugged by her husband to be raped and sexually abused by strangers while unconscious, mostly at the family home in the southern French town of Mazan.

Unlike the initial trial in Avignon, where Gisele Pelicot faced around 50 accused men in court every day, this time she will only face Dogan, who is not in custody.

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. "This is too much for me to bear."

Sixteen other men appealed their verdicts but later abandoned their bids.

According to one of his lawyers, Dogan argues that he was "trapped" by Dominique Pelicot.

"He is appealing because he maintains that he never intended to rape anyone," Jean-Marc Darrigade told AFP.

"His true adversary is not Gisele Pelicot, whom he deeply respects, but the man who was her husband."

Dominique Pelicot has not appealed his 20-year prison sentence and will only appear as a witness at the new trial.

"He will explain exactly what happened to Dogan," his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told AFP.

In prison, Dominique Pelicot speaks to no-one and writes a lot, she said.

"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 -- 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.