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An individual was convicted on higher court review of raping Gisele Pelicot following she was drugged unconscious by her spouse – and received his jail term extended to a decade.

Retrial Proceedings

Husamettin Dogan, 44, an out-of-work construction worker, who had appealed his initial guilty verdict last year, faced a new trial this week at the appeals court in Nîmes.

A panel of five men and four women, sitting with three judges, convicted Dogan on Thursday of sexually assaulting Pelicot in her residence in Provence in the morning of 29 June 2019.

The court heard that Dogan, a married father, reached out to the victim's then husband, the husband, in an online chatroom titled “unbeknownst to her”, where the husband was looking for men to come to his home to assault his wife after he had sedated her into a comatose state.

We trust the panel will say loud and clear that in this society, fundamental rights are also women’s rights – that permission is individual, not transferred,” said the victim's attorney, Antoine Camus. “Permission is obtained personally and not through someone else from a spouse.”

Background

The husband, a notorious sex offenders in recent French history, was handed a sentence to twenty years in prison last year for drugging his spouse and inviting dozens of men to sexually assault her in her home in the town of the village of Mazan over a span of many years of their union.

Dozens of additional defendants were found guilty in a widely publicized trial last year, and Dogan was the sole individual to challenge his sentence. He was originally given a sentence to 9 years in prison, a punishment increased on Thursday to 10 years.

The state's attorney, Dominique Sie, had argued he should serve 12 years, because he “absolutely refuses to take any responsibility”.

Courtroom Details

Dogan had initially sent Dominique Pelicot sexually explicit photos and then driven an hour from his town in the region to rape the victim, after notifying his wife he was going out, the testimony revealed.

Pelicot, who was brought from solitary confinement in prison to temporarily testify at the hearing, informed the court that the accused had known his wife had been “sedated” and he told to men by phone: “I want someone to violate my wife after I’ve sedated her without her consent.”

The courtroom became a central issue for a larger conversation on societal attitudes in society as Dogan continued to assert he was innocent and had not perpetrated assault, stating that because the victim's husband had invited him into the residence, his actions had been permissible.

The jury in the Nîmes appeals court was displayed recorded footage of the victim's unconscious figure, unconscious and snoring in a deep sleep, while a grinning Dogan committed rape multiple times over a timeframe of what authorities reported was 3.5 hours. The judge said she had been at peril of fatal outcome by choking. The prosecution said there was absolute certainty that she had been incapacitated and had not consented.

Defendant's Statements

Dogan told the court the recordings were simply “intimate moments” and denied it was assault. He said what he did was “an intimate behavior”, not assault. He told the court: “I am innocent of assault.” He said the victim's husband had allowed him to the home, and therefore it was permissible. He said he was manipulated by Dominique Pelicot. “I wanted to stop,” Dogan told the court. “I continued because he persuaded me.”

Questioned if he wanted to make a last words to the court, the defendant said: “I had no desire to harm that woman.”

Pelicot's Words

The victim, who was cheered upon departing the trial each day by onlookers present to support her, said to Dogan in court: “You fail to comprehend. When will you acknowledge you assaulted me? It is illegal to rape an unaware woman. How could I have give you agreement? Not once.”

Gisèle Pelicot, seventy-two, became an symbol of resistance after she waived her right to confidentiality in the trial last year when she said: “The shame should shift.”

Legal Commentary

The prosecutor, turning to Gisèle Pelicot in court, said Dogan’s failure to take blame showed that: “Shame has not yet changed sides. Society is maybe in the course of that, maybe propelled by the collective awareness resulting from the exposure of your case.”

Sie said the defendant's claims of blamelessness showed how normalized violence was still widespread in society as part of “archaic” forms of “male domination”. He said: “We need to change rape culture to a society based on agreement.”

Sie addressed the defendant: “As long as you deny it, it’s not just a individual, it’s an entire sordid social system that you are upholding.”

Defendant's Background

Dogan was born in Turkey and at the age of five relocated to the nation of France, where his parent worked as a caretaker. The evidence indicated that his parent was violent and that the defendant began using drugs aged 10. When he was 17 he was caught by authorities for drug trafficking and his father evicted him the family house. He spent time in prison for narcotics offenses in his young adulthood and had worked as a construction worker but had undergone periods of living on the streets.

He was wed and had a son with special needs, who he was the main caregiver for, as his wife worked in a institution's dining hall. The testimony revealed his spouse did not know he had repeated sexual encounters outside their union. His defence said this was his way of coping with his stressful life. Dogan had told a evaluator that once a year he engaged in paid sex on his birthday. His lawyers told the court he had joint inflammation caused by the pressure of the initial proceedings.