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A defendant was convicted on retrial of sexually assaulting Gisele Pelicot following she was sedated by her husband – and received his prison sentence raised to ten years.

Retrial Proceedings

The defendant, forty-four, an unemployed builder, who had contested his initial guilty verdict last year, underwent a appeal hearing this week at the higher court in Nîmes.

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

The court heard that Dogan, a married father, reached out to Gisèle Pelicot’s husband at the time, Dominique Pelicot, in an online chatroom called “without her knowledge”, where Pelicot was recruiting men to come to his home to rape his wife once he had drugged her into a deep sleep.

We expect the panel will say loud and clear that in this society, human rights are also women’s rights – that consent is personal, not given by another,” said the victim's attorney, her legal representative. “Permission is obtained personally and not by proxy from a spouse.”

Background

The husband, among the most severe sexual predators in France's contemporary records, was sentenced to 20 years in prison last year for incapacitating his then wife and bringing in numerous individuals to sexually assault her in her home in the Provence village of the village of Mazan over a span of many years of their union.

Numerous other individuals were found guilty in a widely publicized trial last year, and Dogan was the single defendant to appeal against his verdict. He was first given a sentence to nine years in prison, a penalty enhanced on Thursday to 10 years.

The lead state prosecutor, the prosecutor, had stated he should serve twelve years, because he “stubbornly rejects to take any accountability”.

Evidence Presented

Dogan had initially sent Dominique Pelicot sexually explicit photos and then driven an hour from his village in Provence to assault the victim, after notifying his wife he was stepping out, the testimony revealed.

Pelicot, who was brought from isolation in prison to temporarily provide testimony at the retrial, informed the court that the accused had known his wife had been “drugged” and he said to men by phone: “I want someone to violate my wife after I’ve put her to sleep without her consent.”

The proceedings became a central issue for a wider discussion on societal attitudes in society as Dogan continued to claim he was not guilty and had not perpetrated assault, contending that because the victim's husband had welcomed him into the bedroom, his conduct had been justifiable.

The panel in the Nîmes appeals court was shown recorded footage of the victim's limp body, unconscious and snoring in a unconscious condition, while a grinning Dogan engaged in violation repeatedly over a timeframe of what authorities reported was 3.5 hours. The judge said she had been at danger of fatal outcome by suffocation. The state prosecution said there was absolute certainty that she had been unaware and had not consented.

Defendant's Statements

The defendant stated to the court the videos were simply “intimate moments” and disputed it was assault. He said what he did was “a sexual act”, not assault. He told the court: “I never raped.” He said the victim's husband had invited him to the house, and therefore it was OK. He said he was manipulated by Dominique Pelicot. “I tried to halt,” the accused informed the court. “I continued because he persuaded me.”

Questioned if he wanted to make a closing remarks to the court, the defendant said: “I did not intend to harm that individual.”

Victim's Response

Gisèle Pelicot, who was applauded upon exiting the courtroom each day by onlookers present to back her, addressed Dogan in court: “You do not grasp. When are you going to recognise you raped me? It’s a crime to rape an incapacitated woman. At what point did I give you permission? Not once.”

The victim, seventy-two, became an international feminist hero after she waived her right to anonymity in the trial last year when she said: “Guilt ought to transfer.”

Legal Commentary

The prosecutor, turning to the victim in court, said the defendant's unwillingness to take accountability showed that: “Shame has not yet changed sides. Society is possibly in the midst of that, maybe propelled by the collective awareness brought by the revelation of your ordeal.”

The prosecutor said Dogan’s claims of non-guilt showed how normalized violence was still prevalent in society as part of “archaic” forms of “patriarchal control”. He said: “We need to change rape culture to a culture of consent.”

The prosecutor told the defendant: “As long as you deny it, it’s not just a person, it’s an complete sordid societal structure that you are upholding.”

Biographical Details

Dogan was born in Turkey and at the age of 5 moved to France, where his father worked as a building manager. The testimony revealed that his parent was violent and that the defendant began smoking cannabis at the age of ten. When Dogan was seventeen he was stopped by authorities for dealing drugs and his parent kicked him out the family house. He spent time in prison for drug dealing in his twenties and had worked as a builder but had experienced periods of homelessness.

He was wed and had a son with Down’s syndrome, who he was the principal carer for, as his spouse worked in a educational cafeteria. The evidence showed his wife did not know he had regular sexual encounters outside their union. His defence said this was his method of dealing with his difficult circumstances. Dogan had told a evaluator that each year he engaged in commercial sex on his special day. His legal representatives told the court he had joint inflammation resulting from the anxiety of the initial proceedings.