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An individual has been found guilty on appeal of raping Gisèle Pelicot after she was rendered comatose by her spouse – and has had his prison sentence increased to 10 years.

Appeal Trial

Dogan, 44, an unemployed builder, who had contested his first conviction last year, underwent a retrial this week at the higher court in Nîmes.

A panel of nine jurors, accompanied by three judges, ruled against Dogan on Thursday of raping the victim in her bedroom in Provence in the morning of 29 June 2019.

The testimony revealed that Dogan, a family man, connected with Gisèle Pelicot’s spouse, Dominique Pelicot, in an internet forum named “without her knowledge”, where the husband was seeking men to enter his residence to assault his wife after he had drugged her into a comatose state.

We expect the court will declare that in this society, human rights are also rights of women – that permission is individual, not transferred,” said the victim's lawyer, her legal representative. “Permission is obtained personally and not through someone else from a spouse.”

Background

Dominique Pelicot, a notorious sex offenders in recent French history, was handed a sentence to 20 years in prison last year for incapacitating his wife at the time and soliciting numerous individuals to rape her in her home in the town of Mazan over a period of nearly ten years of their union.

Fifty other men were found convicted in a high-profile trial last year, and the appellant was the only man to challenge his verdict. He was originally given a sentence to nine years in prison, a punishment raised on Thursday to ten years.

The state's attorney, Dominique Sie, had argued he should serve 12 years, because he “absolutely refuses to take any blame”.

Evidence Presented

The defendant had initially sent the husband graphic images and then traveled an hour from his village in Provence to rape the victim, after informing his wife he was going out, the court heard.

Pelicot, who was brought from solitary confinement in prison to briefly provide testimony at the appeal trial, stated to the court that Dogan had known his wife had been “incapacitated” and he communicated to men by phone: “I want someone to abuse my wife after I’ve rendered her unconscious unbeknownst to her.”

The trial became a key topic for a broader debate on rape culture in society as the defendant continued to assert he was blameless and had not perpetrated assault, stating that because Gisèle Pelicot’s husband had welcomed him into the room, his actions had been permissible.

The jury in the Nîmes appeals court was shown video evidence of the victim's limp body, comatose and snoring in a comatose state, while a smiling Dogan performed assault on several occasions over a duration of what authorities reported was 3.5 hours. The judge said she had been at peril of death by choking. The prosecution said there was no question that she had been incapacitated and had not agreed.

Dogan's Claims

The defendant told the court the videos were simply “intimate moments” and denied it was rape. He said what he did was “an intimate behavior”, not assault. He stated the court: “I am innocent of assault.” He said Gisèle Pelicot’s husband had brought him to the home, and therefore it was OK. He said he was deceived by Dominique Pelicot. “I wanted to stop,” Dogan stated to the court. “I continued because he convinced me.”

Inquired if he wanted to make a final statement to the court, the defendant said: “I never wanted to injure that individual.”

Victim's Response

The survivor, who was applauded upon exiting the courtroom each day by crowds assembled to support her, told Dogan in court: “You do not grasp. When will you acknowledge you assaulted me? It is illegal to assault an unaware woman. When did I ever give you agreement? At no time.”

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

Sie, speaking to the victim in court, said Dogan’s failure to take blame showed that: “The shame remains. The community is perhaps in the course of that, perhaps driven by the collective awareness spurred by the publication of your situation.”

Sie said Dogan’s claims of innocence showed how normalized violence was still common in society as part of “archaic” forms of “male domination”. He said: “We need to change the culture of violence to a culture of consent.”

Sie addressed Dogan: “As long as you reject it, it’s not just a woman, it’s an whole unpleasant cultural framework that you are upholding.”

Personal History

The accused was born in the country of Turkey and at the age of 5 relocated to the nation of France, where his parent worked as a caretaker. The court heard that his father was violent and that Dogan began consuming marijuana aged 10. When he was seventeen he was apprehended by police for drug trafficking and his parent evicted him the residence. He was incarcerated in prison for drug dealing in his young adulthood and had worked as a construction worker but had faced periods of living on the streets.

He was married and had a son with a genetic condition, who he was the principal carer for, as his wife worked in a institution's dining hall. The evidence showed his spouse did not know he had regular extramarital activities beyond their marriage. His legal team said this was his method of dealing with his challenging existence. The defendant had stated to a mental health expert that once a year he looked for commercial sex on his special day. His attorneys stated to the court he had joint inflammation caused by the stress of the original case.