Gisèle Pelicot returns to court after making it an icon

On the first day, Gisèle Pelicot followed the court’s steps in Avignon in September 2024, it was an unknown retired grandmother.

Within weeks, this 72 -year -old victim – the victim in the midst of the largest trial for rape in French history, which included 51 men, including her husband – has become a feminist icon.

The last time was seen in public places when the rulings were presented – all of them guilty – in December. By that time, crowds of supporters were chanting her name.

On Monday, Gisèle Pelicot returns to court this time in Nîmes, to appeal the only only 51 defendants to challenge his punishment: Husamettin Dogan, 44 years old, a married father.

Between September and December last year, Gisèle traveled around the world. For more than a decade, she had been numbed by her husband Dominic and was raped by dozens of men who recruited in the online chat rooms.

Dominic Pelicot photographed the attacks and classified them carefully on a hard disk, allowing the investigators to track the majority of the individuals concerned. About 20 years can not be recognized and remained in general.

After a 16 -week trial, 46 men were convicted of rape, two of the attempt to rape and two sexual assault. Dominic Pelicot has been delivered maximum imprisonment for 20 years.

Husamettin Dogan’s appeal next week, in fact, will be a retrial. Gisèle rape videos will be shown in court again, and Pelicot will be present – this time, just as a witness.

Although it is not obligated to do so, Gisèle will also attend the procedures.

One of her lawyers, Stephen Babono, told the BBC: “Everyone understood whether she did not come because, well, trying to resume a normal life.” “But she feels that she needs to be there and has a responsibility to be there until the end of the procedures.”

In December, Dogan was convicted of strict rape and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Because of the health reasons, he was delivered a deferred nursery note and not currently in prison. According to what was stated, both the guilty judgment and the length of his punishment are resumed.

As was the case for many other 51 men, Dogan’s defense depends on the argument that cannot be guilty of Gisèle’s rape because he did not realize that she will be aware. Pelicot rejected this argument, saying that he clearly made it clear to men who recruited online that his wife would be anesthetized.

In his statement before the court last year, Dogan admitted Bilikot that his wife “looked dead.” However, he was strongly pushed against the accusations leveled against him. “I do not accept to describe a rapist,” protested. “It’s a very heavy burden for me to carry it.”

Although 16 other defendants initially made calls, Dogan was the only one who pushed her forward.

Unlike the first trial, Dogan’s appeal will be sentenced by a jury consisting of nine members of the public who will decide on both his conviction and the length of the prison period.

If it loses its appeal, the huge coverage of the trial and media coverage may mean that the jury ends with less leniency than the judges last December.

“It is a real danger and I think this is the reason that many men pulled out of their calls,” French judge, Magali Lavorsad, told the BBC.

She believes that the Pelicot issue had a major impact on French society and that jury must have a new understanding of societal issues on rape and approval.

“It will be interesting to see what the defendant comes with,” she said. “He may try to show that he has learned lessons from feminism, or that he is not a danger to society. Many will also depend on the quality of his defense – and his lawyers know the development of society in the past year.”

The procedures, which will last only four days, are scheduled to be combat.

Last year, Dogan Silve Menviel’s lawyer suggested that rape videos showed a “triple -trendy sexual game” and may have been a complicit.

Gisèle’s angry comments out of the court session in the middle of the second time only in the trial, which I followed hard-and is expected to do again next week.

Although last year she only dealt with court in a handful of occasions, whenever she did, Gisèle said that she was speaking publicly to help other rape victims: “I want them to say: If Madame Pelicot does, I can also.”

She insisted that shame should change the two sides from the victim to the perpetrator. This logic was at the heart of its decision to relinquish its identity, opening the trial on the media and the public, and pressed to display its videos in the court.

It was a very important decision, and the reason that the trial got all over the world. Since the rulings were issued, Gisèle Pelicot has been named as one of the 100 most 100 people in Time Seffness. She also won many awards including French Legion D’honneur and was sent by a personal message by Queen Camilla.

But to a large extent, after those months in the eyes of the audience, Gisèle managed to restore the privileged privacy. Soon after the end of the trial, I fell to Eli Di Ri, a small island off the Atlantic coast of France.

For some time, her only pictures that appeared were personal photos from sometimes that her son Florian posted on social media, and showed her sitting next to the sea, wearing the camera.

That privacy did not continue. Last spring, Glossy Magazine Paris Match Partazi Pichesi has published her and her new partner wandering at île de ré.

Many noticed that it was another example of the personal photos taken and shared without agreeing. Its legal team published to the court took the pretext that Gisèle’s decision to relinquish its identity throughout the trial period does not mean giving up its right to a private life.

“She is a victim of rape that has become a public figure despite herself.” (The case was eventually settled when the Paris match agreed to make donations to associations that support victims of sexual violence.)

Gisèle Pelicot is not the only shift since last year.

When the procedures began in September 2024, it was supported by her three adult children – Caroline, David and Florian. Now, the coherent family unit that entered the Avignon court last September.

David Pelicot and Caroline Darian described themselves as “forgotten victims” for the next trial and the next week in Nims, will be accompanied by Jesel only Florian, the youngest of her children.

At the heart of the family’s division is the moment the court shook last November, when Gisèle was asked about the photos on Pelicot computer showing their semi -naked daughter Caroline, apparently sleeping and wearing unfamiliar underwear.

Caroline Darian has always insisted on proving that her father was numb and assaulted – and in March she pressed on charges against him. He has always denied sexual assault on his daughter.

Caroline remembered how, on the platform, Gisèle refused to address the thugs of kinship against her husband. “It seems as if the earth was opened under my feet. Its silence spoke. It is a point of not returning.”

“I was her only daughter, she should not give up my hand, especially after that.” She had previously destroyed what she saw that she “refused” her mother, left the courtroom.

Ms. Darian-who has since threw herself in a battle against “chemical submission” (sexual assault)-said that she no longer speaks, and it is not expected that she will attend the trial of next week.

Her older brother David, who was honest in her support for her, will remain away.

His 19 -year -old son, Nathan, pressed charges against Dominic Pelicot after the trial was directed to childhood memories of sexual assault. When the charges were rejected earlier this year because there was no evidence, Caroline said it was “angry and disgusting.”

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

For her, Nathan and other victims who could not provide the evidence that Gisèle wrote, Caroline wrote, “There will be no truth, not justice, no compensation.”

In the same way that the trial of last year wore beyond the court hall in Avenueon, which sparked urgent talks throughout the country due to rape, approval and sexual violence, the crimes of Dominic Pelicot extended through the family.

The photos taken on the day of the opening of the experiment in September 2024 show the seismic changes that swept Pelicots in the past 13 months.

They explain how Avenueon’s court hall was almost empty as Gisèle entered and entered her family for the first time. Within a few days, this will become an arrogant center of activists, journalists and members of the public – who will definitely meet again in the new court session in Nim.

One of the pictures shows how near Pelicot family: sitting on a small seat in court, gathering together as one, waiting for the procedures to start.

Under the protection of her brothers, Caroline, they tend to the front, Gisèle accepted the cheek.