Paris [France], October 8 : It was the same criminal investigator, the same medical expert and the same perpetrator-turned-witness, wearing the same grey jacket, the New York Times reported.
In separate accounts, they told an appeals court how Gisèle Pelicot had been drugged by her husband, Dominique Pelicot, at the time, and then raped by him and many other men, at his invitation.
Gisele Pelicot allowed a mass rape trial centring on what happened to her to be open to the public last year, awakening a huge conversation in France and forcing some important changes in the country. But time seemed to stand still in the courtroom on Tuesday, the second day of an appeal by one of the men convicted in that trial, Husamettin Dogan, 44. He was among 51 men convicted in the first trial, including Pelicot, though not all for rape, as per New York Times.
Aurore Perez, 41, a feminist activist who attended much of last year's trial in Avignon, was once again in the crowd singing and applauding outside the Court of Appeal in Nimes, when Gisele Pelicot, now 72, left for the day. "I have the feeling I'm living the same nightmare," Perez said. "We are sick of hearing the same story."
Most of the men who were convicted of raping Gisele Pelicot when she was in a near-coma-like state were sentenced to three to 15 years in prison. Pelicot is serving a 20-year prison term in isolation, as per New York Times.
Dogan, who is married and is the main caregiver for his severely handicapped older son, told the court during his brief appearance on the stand on Monday that he never intended to rape Gisele Pelicot and that he learned only after his arrest that she had been drugged.
Pelicot, who wore the same grey jacket he donned during the earlier trial, said Dogan knew that Gisele Pelicot had been drugged.
Experts who interviewed Dogan, including psychiatrists, psychologists and a police officer, elaborated in court on Tuesday.
They testified that Dogan believed he was going to the couple's house in the south of France for a threesome. Pelicot had said his wife was pretending to sleep, as that was part of their game, Dogan told the expert witnesses, but he realised after about 30 minutes in their bedroom that something was very wrong, and he fled the house.
Dogan was arrested two years later, in 2021, after a security guard caught Pelicot filming up women's skirts in a grocery store in 2020 and called the police, the New York Times reported.
Dogan blamed Pelicot for what happened, arguing that he followed his lead and his instructions, said Daouia Boumediene, the police officer who interviewed him in jail. But he was also evasive and vague. Dogan said he had memory lapses, according to Boumediene, which Dogan blamed on the five whiskeys he said he drank before going to the Pelicot house.
Pelicot's voluminous videos and photos of all the encounters, which formed the central evidence in the case, show that Dogan stayed at the couple's house for "at least four hours," Jeremie Bosse Platière, a divisional commissioner and the head of the police investigation, told the court. They capture him penetrating Gisele Pelicot's body eight times, including one rape that lasted "at least 30 minutes," Commissioner Platière said.
When asked whether he believed Dogan could have been unaware of Gisele Pelicot's state, he responded, "I'm convinced he was fully aware of it."
Pelicot, who arrived at court with a large police presence on Tuesday, testified that he met Dogan, as he had all the other 50 men convicted in the case, on a notorious website that has since shut down, and that they then talked by phone.
Pelicot said he told Dogan clearly that he had drugged his wife, and they went over all the rules he regularly used to ensure she wouldn't awake during the rape scenes -- "no tobacco, no scent, wash his hands in warm water, no violence, and that it would be filmed."
"All these things left him in no doubt of her state," he said.
Pelicot denied ever calling it a game, and said he didn't dominate or trick Dogan, who, he said, "absolutely" did not flee from the house.
"I accompanied him to the kitchen to get dressed," he said.
In about 10 cases, the police were able to track down Skype exchanges between the men and Pelicot, which revealed he had told them he was drugging his wife, Commissioner Platière told the court. But no such communication between Dogan and Pelicot was found.
Gisele Pelicot sat in the courtroom behind her lawyers, quietly listening to the testimony as she had in the first trial. During particularly difficult descriptions of the abuse she suffered, her younger son, Florian, reached over and squeezed her shoulder.
Before last year's trial started, Gisele Pelicot was not in the least famous, simply a retired manager who liked to go for walks and take care of her grandchildren. Since the trial, she has become known around the world, with books, plays and documentaries about her piling up.
In France, her case caused a profound societal discussion about misogyny, rape culture and the pervasiveness of "chemical submission," the use of drugs to victimize people. In its wake, the government approved a curriculum for sex education classes after decades of dragging its feet. The trial also pushed lawmakers to introduce the concept of consent into the French penal code's definition of rape. (Final reviews of the change are expected this month.)
Though many feminists say the changes are not profound enough, they agree that the case has had an impact, New York Times reported.
"Sociologically, it has changed things," Celine Piques, president of the feminist group Dare Feminism, said in an interview last week, before the appeal trial. When her group protested against accused rapists just a few years ago, they found little support, she said.
On Tuesday, a large crowd gathered outside the courthouse for a second evening.
They chanted a famous line from the case spoken by a defense lawyer, Antoine Camus, "Shame must change sides."