Gisèle Pelicot returns to court after trial made her an icon - and tore her family apart

2 hours ago Share Save Laura Gozzi BBC News Share Save

Getty Images Gisèle Pelicot will return to court as one of her 51 rapists launches an appeal

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.