Gisele Pelicot was mobbed by a huge crowd outside a French court today as she faces one of her rapists, who has appealed his conviction. 

She was surrounded by police, her lawyers, and relatives as she made her way into the courthouse in Nimes.  

The only rapist left challenging his judgement for sexually abusing the 72-year-old is claiming he was ‘trapped’ by her husband.

Last year, Husamettin Dogan, 44, was sentenced to nine years in prison for raping Pelicot after her then husband, Dominique Pelicot, invited him via an online chatroom to abuse her while she was unconscious. 

However, Dogan, one of 51 men found guilty of rape at Dominique’s invitation, argues that he was misled into believing she had consented.

Dogan’s defence team said he plans to appeal against both his criminal responsibility and the sentence during the trial in the southern city of Nimes from Monday to Thursday.

‘He maintains that he never went to the couple’s home with the intention of raping anyone,’ one of his lawyers, Jean-Marc Darrigade, said. ‘He is deeply affected by the fact that he could be labelled as a rapist.’    

Dogan’s fight is not with the main plaintiff, Pelicot, whom he ‘respects deeply’, Darrigade said. Instead, it is with Dominique, 72, ‘the cynical man who trapped him’. Pelicot was not mandated to attend today’s hearing, but chose to do so. 

The Turkish man, who has arthritis and appeared at the first trial using a walking stick, is technically still a free man as his appeal has put his prison sentence on hold.

‘I’m not a rapist,’ the construction worker said during the first trial. ‘This is too much for me to bear. He’s her husband. I never thought that guy could do this to his wife.’

Gisele Pelicot was seen arriving in a French court today. She was not mandated to attend today’s hearing, but chose to do so

Pictured: Painter and decorator Husamettin Dogan, 44. He was sentenced to nine years in prison last year for raping Pelicot after her then husband, Dominique Pelicot, invited him via an online chatroom to abuse her while she was unconscious

Gisele Pelicot, 72, who survived almost a decade of rape involving dozens of men after she was unknowingly drugged by her ex-husband, Dominique Pelicot, will attend appeals court in southern France today

Dogan visited the Pelicot family home once, in June 2019.

During the first trial, he was at first not prepared to accept the charges against him.

He said Dominique sent him a message saying he was part of a sexually adventurous couple and they were seeking someone to take part in sex while his wife ‘pretended to sleep’.

He says he received a message, supposedly from Pelicot, saying she agreed to him coming over. Dogan then headed over to their home in the small southern town of Mazan that same evening, where he was led into the main bedroom.    

‘I started foreplay, I saw she didn’t react. I said, ‘She’s dead, your wife.’ (Dominique Pelicot) said, ‘No, you’re imagining it.’ He penetrated her and she lifted up her head a little,’ he said.

Dogan said they continued for at least half an hour, until he clearly heard Gisele Pelicot snoring. He then decided to leave, he said.

Reminded by one of the judges of the definition of rape – an act committed ‘through violence, constraint, threat or surprise’ – he initially conceded.

‘I admit it was rape,’ he said.

But at the end of the trial in the southern town of Avignon, Dogan again said he was not a rapist.

His lawyer said the appeal hearing would give his client more time to present his case.

‘They found that Mrs Pelicot was being controlled’ by her then husband, he said. ‘Can’t we also conceive something similar for the few minutes during which Dogan faced this exceptionally perverse man who mastered all tricks of persuasion?

‘I don’t think it’s offensive to discuss it a second time,’ said Darrigade.

Dominique Pelicot, 72, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for raping and organising the mass rape of his wife

Initially, 17 of the 51 convicted men said they would appeal against the verdict, but 16 gradually dropped out, leaving only one appeal.

Pelicot’s lawyer, Antoine Camus, said she would have preferred not to face the ordeal of attending another trial but would be present at the four-day trial at Nîmes court of appeal.

‘She will be there to explain that a rape is a rape, that there is no such thing as a small rape,’ Camus told Agence France-Presse.

Dominique was sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging his former wife and inviting dozens of strangers to rape her while unconscious.

He had had laced his wife’s food and drink with tranquilisers to render her unconscious before inviting men he met online to take part in sordid rape and abuse fantasies that he acted out with them and filmed in their retirement home in the small Provence town of Mazan and elsewhere.

The images and footage were only discovered when he was caught in September 2020 upskirting women at a local supermarket, with a subsequent police search of his home revealing the thousands of photos of his wife. 

Now serving a prison sentence in solitary confinement, Dominique will appear as a witness at the appeal court trial.  He is expected to repeat what he said at the first trial: ‘I am a rapist – like everyone else in this room.’

Following the brave waiver of her anonymity during last year’s trial, Pelicot has gone on to become a feminist icon across France and the globe.

The former logistics manager, had insisted the first rape trial in 2024 be held in public to raise awareness of drug-induced rape and abuse. ‘It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them,’ she said in court.