Giselle Pelicot returns to court after her ordeal made an icon

The first day in which Giselle Pelicot followed the steps of the Avignon Judicial Chamber in September 2024, she was an anonymous retired grandmother.

Within weeks, this diminished 72 -year -old – the victim at the center of the biggest trial for rape in French history, including 51 men, including her husband, has become a feminist icon.

It was last seen in public when the sentences – all guilty – were betrayed in December. Until then, the crowds of supporters chanted her name.

On Monday, Gisèle Pelicot returned to court, this time in Nîmes, to appeal the only 51 defendants to challenge his sentence: 44 -year -old Husametin Dogan, the married father of one.

Between September and December last year, Gizel’s dark story toured the world. For more than a decade, she has been unconsciously drugged by her husband Dominic and raped by dozens of men she has recruited on the Internet chat rooms.

Dominic Pelicot filmed the attacks and cataloged them well on a hard disk, which allowed investigators to track the bigger part of the participants. About 20 could not be identified and left free.

After a 16 -weeks test, 46 men were found guilty of rape, two for an attempt to rape and two of a sexual assault. Dominic Pelicot received the maximum prison sentence for 20 years.

Husamet Dogan’s call next week will actually be re -examined. Gisèle’s rape videos will again be shown in court and Pelicot will be present – this time, though, only as a witness.

While it is not obliged, Gisèle will also be present in production.

“Everyone would have understood if she hadn’t come, because, well, she was trying to resume her normal life,” one of her lawyers, Stefan Babono, told the BBC. “But she feels that she must be there and is responsible for being there until the end of production.”

In December, Dogan was found guilty of aggravated rape and sentenced to nine years in prison. For health reasons, he was served on a deferred arrest order and is not currently in prison. It is reported that he appealed both the guilty sentence and the duration of his sentence.

As was the case with many of the other 51 men, Dogan’s defense depends on the dispute that he cannot be guilty of raping Gisèle, since he has not realized that he will be unconscious. Pelicot rejected this argument, saying that he had given very clearly to the men he appointed online, that his wife would be drugged.

In his statement to court last year, Dogan admitted he told Pelicot that his wife “looks dead.” However, he fiercely backed away against the accusations leveled against him. “I don’t agree to be labeled a rapist,” he protested. “It’s too heavy for me to wear.”

Although 16 other defendants also initially filed appeals, Dogan was the only one heading forward to him.

Unlike the first trial, Dogan’s complaint will be evaluated by the jurors made up of nine public members who will decide on both his sentence and the duration of his prison.

If he loses his complaint, the huge resonance and reflection of the media may mean that the jurors are ultimately less lenient than the judges were last December.

“This is a real risk and I think that’s why so many men have withdrawn their complaints,” French magistrate Magali Lafurkade told the BBC.

She believes that the Pelicot case has had a significant impact on French society and that jurors are obliged to have a new understanding of public problems surrounding rape and consent.

“It will be interesting to see what the defendant is inventing,” she said. “He may try to show that he has learned feminism lessons or that it is not a risk to society. It will also depend on the quality of his defense – and his lawyers know how much society has evolved over the past year.”

The production, which will last only four days, are designated as combat.

Last year, Dogan’s lawyer Sylvie Meviel suggested that the videos of rape show “three -way sex game” and hinted Gisèle could be an accomplice.

The comments prompted the indignant Gisèle to come out of the middle of the courtroom only for the second time in the trial, which otherwise followed the diligently, which is expected to do again next week.

Although last year she only appealed to the court on a handful of cases, every time she did, Giselle said she was talking to help other victims of rape: “I want them to say: if Madame Pelikot did it, and I can.”

Shame must change sides from the victim of the perpetrator, she insisted. This reasoning was at the heart of her decision to abandon her anonymity, to open the media and the public process, and to insist that the videos of her rape be shown in court.

This was an important solution and the reason for the process to collect worldwide resonance. As the sentences were handed over, Gisèle Pelicot was declared one of the 100 most influential people of Time. She was also awarded numerous awards, including the French Legion D’Aneur and a personal letter was sent from Queen Camilla.

But overall, after these months in the eyes of society, Giselle managed to regain her seclusion that had been denied her for so long. Shortly after the end of the process, she retired to the ancy de ré, a small island off the Atlantic Ocean of France.

For a while, her only images that appeared were casual selfies published by her son Florian on social media, showing her to sit by the sea to shake the camera.

This privacy did not continue. Last spring, the Mlissy Magazine Paris Match published photos of paparazzi on her and her new partner, who strolls along the ancy de ré.

Many have noted that this is another case of personal images that are made and shared without her consent. Her legal team accepted the publication before the court, arguing that Gisèle’s decision to abandon its anonymity during the process does not mean to give up its right to privacy.

“She is a victim of rape that has become a public figure, despite herself,” said her lawyer Antoine Camus. (The case was eventually settled when Paris match agreed to donate to two associations that support victims of sexual abuse.)

Gisèle Pelicot’s public visibility is not the only change from last year.

When the procedures began in September 2024, it was supported by its three elderly children – Caroline, David and Florian. Now, a closely woven family unit, who entered the Avignon tribunal last September, is no longer.

David Pelicot and Caroline Darian have called themselves the “forgotten victims” of the test and next week in Nîmes, Gisèle will only be accompanied by Florian, the youngest of her children.

At the heart of the family cleavage is a moment that shook the court last November, when Giselle was asked for photos found on Pelicot’s computer showing her half -naked daughter Caroline, apparently asleep and dressed in unknown underwear.

Caroline Darian has always insisted on the photos to prove that her father was drugged and attacked her – and in March he charged him. He has always denied sexual assault on his daughter.

Caroline recalled how, in the podium, Giselle refused to turn to the accusations of incest against her husband. “And it was as if the Earth opened under my feet. Her silence spoke a lot. This marked a point of grant.”

“I was her only daughter, she didn’t have to let go of my hand, especially not then,” Da Darian writes. Devilted by what she saw as “rejection of her mother,” she left the courtroom.

Mrs. Darian-who has since been battling herself in a battle against “chemical submission” (sexual assault with drugs), that she and Giselle are no longer talking and is not expected to attend the trial next week.

Her bigger brother, David, who is vocsed in her support for her, will also stand aside.

His son, Nathan, who has already been 19, has charged Dominic Pelicot after the trial reported that he had caused childhood memories of sexual abuse. When the allegations were rejected earlier this year due to lack of evidence, Caroline said it was “outraged and disgusting”.

“It is as if they said: Your pain exists, but … it cannot be recognized, it will never end.”

For her, Nathan and other victims who cannot present the evidence that Gizel had, Caroline writes: “There will be no truth, not justice, no recovery.”

Similarly, last year, the ordeal reflects far beyond the Avignon courtroom, causing emergency conversations across the country for rape, consent and gender violence, Dominic Pelicot’s crimes, breaking through the family, tearing it off.

The images made on the day of the trial opening in September 2024 are emphasizing the seismic changes that have swallowed the pelicots in the last 13 months.

They show how Avignon’s courtroom hall was almost empty when Jisel and her family first entered. Within days, it will become a fence center of activists, journalists and public members – crowds that will surely reunite at the new hearing at Nîmes.

One of the photos shows how close the Pelicot family is: sitting on a small bench in a court, tucked together as one, waiting for the procedure to begin.

Under the protective embrace of his brothers Caroline, bent forward, kisses Giselle on the cheek.