Gisèle Pelicot's Court Return: An Emblem of Resilience Amidst Family Strains

The first day Gisèle Pelicot walked up the steps of the courthouse in Avignon in September 2024, she was an anonymous retired grandmother.

Within weeks, this diminutive 72-year-old - the victim at the centre of the largest rape trial in French history, involving 51 men including her husband - had become a feminist icon.

She was last seen in public when the verdicts - all guilty - were handed down in December. By then, crowds of supporters were chanting her name.

On Monday, Gisèle Pelicot returns to court, this time in Nîmes, for the appeal of the only one of the 51 defendants to challenge his sentence: Husamettin Dogan, 44, a married father of one.

Between September and December last year, Gisèle's bleak story travelled the world. For over a decade, she had been drugged unconscious by her husband Dominique and raped by dozens of men he had recruited on internet chat rooms.

Dominique Pelicot filmed the assaults and neatly catalogued them on a hard disk, which allowed investigators to track down the majority of the individuals involved. Around 20 could not be identified and remain at large.

After a trial lasting 16 weeks, 46 men were found guilty of rape, two of attempted rape and two of sexual assault. Dominique Pelicot was handed the maximum jail sentence of 20 years.

Husamettin Dogan's appeal next week will, in effect, be a retrial. The videos of Gisèle's rape will be shown in court again, and Pelicot will be present – this time, though, only as a witness.

While she is not obliged to, Gisèle too will attend the proceedings.

Everyone would have understood if she hadn't come because, well, she is trying to resume a normal life, one of her lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau, told the BBC. But she feels she needs to be there and has a responsibility to be there until the end of the proceedings.

In December, Dogan was found guilty of aggravated rape and sentenced to nine years in prison. Due to health reasons he was handed a deferred custody warrant and is not currently in jail. He is reportedly appealing both the guilty verdict and the length of his sentence.

As was the case for many of the other 51 men, Dogan's defence hinged on the argument he could not be guilty of raping Gisèle because he had not realised she would be unconscious. Pelicot rejected this argument, saying he had made it abundantly clear to the men he recruited online that his wife would be drugged.

In his statement to the court last year, Dogan did admit telling Pelicot that his wife looked dead. Still, he vehemently pushed back against the accusations levelled at him. I don't accept being labelled a rapist, he protested. It's too heavy a burden for me to carry.

Although 16 other defendants also initially lodged appeals, Dogan was the only one who has pushed ahead with it.

Unlike the first trial, Dogan's appeal will be judged by a jury made up of nine members of the public who will decide on both his conviction and the length of his jail term.

If he loses his appeal, the trial's huge resonance and media coverage may mean the jury ends up being less lenient than the judges were last December.

It's a real risk and I think that's why so many men withdrew their appeals, French magistrate Magali Lafourcade told the BBC.

She believes the Pelicot case has had a significant effect on French society and that jurors are bound to have a new understanding of societal issues around rape and consent.

It will be interesting to see what the defendant comes up with, she said. He may try to show he has learned lessons of feminism, or that he is not a risk to society. A lot will also depend on the quality of his defence - and his lawyers know how much society has evolved this past year.

The proceedings, which this time will only last four days, are set to be combative.

Last year, Dogan's lawyer suggested the rape videos showed a three-way sex game and hinted Gisèle may have been complicit.

Since the verdicts were handed down, Gisèle has regained some privacy but faced challenges as her family's unity has been shattered. Her eldest children, Caroline and David, publicly expressed feeling like forgotten victims and have distanced themselves from Gisèle, straining family ties further.

Amidst this turmoil, Gisèle remains committed to her message, emphasizing that shame should lie with the guilty, not the victims. Her journey continues not only in the courtroom but also in the public sphere, highlighting critical conversations on consent and gender-based violence.