The 72-year-old grandmother heads back to court after landmark case transformed her into a symbol - and ripped her close-knit relatives

Initially Gisèle Pelicot ascended the stairs of the judicial center in Avignon in September 2024, she was an unrecognized elderly woman.

Within weeks, this diminutive septuagenarian - the survivor at the core of the largest rape trial in French history, involving 51 men among them her spouse - had transformed into a feminist icon.

She was last seen in open view when the judgments - every defendant found culpable - were delivered in the final month of 2024. At that point, throngs of supporters were chanting her name.

On Monday the survivor makes her return to legal proceedings, this time in the southern city, for the legal challenge of the sole individual of the 51 perpetrators to challenge his prison term: Husamettin Dogan, forty-four, a married father of one.

The Case That Shook French Society

Over a three-month period the previous year, the survivor's harrowing story travelled the world. During more than multiple years, she had been sedated into a drugged state by her spouse the perpetrator and violated by numerous individuals he had recruited on digital forums.

The perpetrator captured the attacks and neatly catalogued them on a hard disk, which permitted law enforcement to locate the bulk of the suspects implicated. Around 20 could not be traced and remain free.

Following a legal proceedings lasting four months, the majority of defendants were convicted of rape, two of attempted sexual assault and two others of assault. The husband was given the maximum incarceration period of 20 years.

The Appeal Hearing

The appellant's retrial next week will, practically, be a retrial. The footage of Gisèle's rape will be shown in court again, and the husband will be there – on this occasion, though, only as a testifier.

While she is not obliged to, the grandmother also will attend the hearings.

"All people would have understood if she chose not to attend as, well, she is striving to return to a ordinary routine," a member of her lawyers, Stéphane Babonneau, informed. "But she feels she needs to be in attendance and has a obligation to be present up to the completion of the legal process."

In December, Dogan was found guilty of grave violation and handed a prison term to multiple years in jail. Because of health reasons he was handed a postponed imprisonment and is presently not in custody. He is reportedly appealing the conviction and the duration of his sentence.

Courtroom Tactics

As was the case for several of the other 51 men, the defendant's strategy rested on the argument he could not be guilty of raping the victim because he had been unaware she would be incapacitated. Pelicot rejected this claim, stating he had explicitly stated to the participants he recruited through digital means that his wife would be drugged.

While addressing the court during the trial the defendant did admit telling the perpetrator that his wife "looked dead". Nevertheless, he forcefully resisted to the charges directed at him. "I don't accept being branded a sexual predator," he argued. "The burden is excessive a responsibility for me to shoulder."

Even though 16 other defendants too at first submitted appeals, the appellant was the only one who has proceeded with it.

Relational Breakdown

When proceedings commenced in last year, she was supported by her three grown offspring – the eldest daughter, her son and her youngest. Currently, the united family unit that appeared at the judicial center in autumn 2024 is has dissolved.

David Pelicot and Caroline Darian have referred to themselves the "unrecognized sufferers" of the trial and in the coming days in Nîmes, the mother will only be supported by Florian, the most junior of her sons and daughter.

The core issue of the relational breakdown is a incident that rocked the legal proceedings in autumn, when Gisèle was asked about photographs discovered on Pelicot's device showing their in underwear daughter Caroline, appearing in a drugged state and wearing unusual underwear.

Caroline Darian has repeatedly insisted the photos prove her