Man convicted in Gisèle Pelicot case says he ‘never intended’ to rape her

An unemployed builder seeking to overturn his conviction for raping Gisèle Pelicot when she had been drugged unconscious by her husband has told a court he “never intended” to rape her.

On the opening day of his appeal trial in the southern French city of Nîmes, Husamettin Dogan, 44, a married father, was asked by the lead judge if he denied the charge of rape.

He said: “I never intended to do so … I am here because I never wanted to rape this lady, whom I respect.” He said he accepted he had had sexual contact with Pelicot but said: “I never knew she was drugged.”

Pelicot, 72, a former logistics manager, survived almost a decade of rape involving dozens of men. She was drugged by her then husband who invited people he had met in online chatrooms to come to their home to abuse her while she was unconscious in her own bed. She became an international feminist hero after she decided to waive her right to anonymity in the trial of 51 men last year.

Pelicot watched calmly in the Nîmes appeals court on Monday, sitting with her youngest son, Florian. She told the judges that once again she would waive her right to anonymity in the four-day trial.

Arriving at court, she shook hands with supporters outside. A banner saying “Gisèle, women thank you” was hung outside the courthouse. Women applauded as she left court.

The presiding judge, Christian Pasta, reminded the court of the facts of the case, describing the abuse to which Pelicot had been subjected by her ex-husband.

Dominique Pelicot had filmed the men who raped her and stored the images on a hard drive in a file labelled “abuse”, which was found by police after he was arrested for filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in the southern town of Carpentras in 2020.

Last year Dogan was sentenced to nine years in prison for raping Pelicot after a court in Avignon was shown video evidence of him in the Pelicots’ bedroom. Of the 51 men who were found guilty in the trial last year, he is the only one to appeal against his conviction.

Dogan arrived at the court walking with a crutch and covering his face with sunglasses and a Covid mask. He told the judges he currently had no profession.

Dogan’s first trial heard he had made contact with Dominique Pelicot in a chatroom and had driven to the couple’s home the same night in June 2019, telling his wife he was going out. He was convicted of raping Gisèle Pelicot while she was unconscious.

Dogan told the first trial he had thought it was just a game. “I’m not a rapist, that’s too heavy for me to bear,” he said.

The presiding judge told the appeals court in Nîmes that toxicology experts agreed that in the video showing Gisèle Pelicot with Dogan, she was clearly unconscious and almost in a foetal position. The judge said that at one point Dominique Pelicot held her head to avoid it rolling to the side.

Dogan was born in Turkey and at the age of five or six moved to France where his father worked as a concierge in a building, the court heard. After a fire when he was a child, the family were moved to emergency accommodation on a housing estate where Dogan later began dealing drugs, and he received a conviction aged 17 before serving a prison sentence at 20.

He had a violent father and an unstable working life, with short-term building contacts and periods of homelessness from the age of 17, the court heard. He had smoked cannabis from the age of 10 and at one point was drinking a bottle of whisky a day, but stopped drinking and smoking at the time of the birth of his son, who has Down’s syndrome. He cared for his son for several years while his wife worked in a school canteen, the court heard.

Psychiatric experts who interviewed Dogan told the court that he described having a satisfactory sex life with his wife while hiding from her that he was arranging with men in online chatrooms to take part in occasional threesomes. A court psychologist said he watched pornography and sought paid sex “once a year on his birthday”.

Dominique Pelicot, one of the worst sex offenders in modern French history, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for drugging his then wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her in her home in the south of France.

Now serving a prison sentence in solitary confinement, he will appear as a witness at the appeal court trial on Tuesday afternoon. He is expected to repeat what he said at the first trial: “I am a rapist and all the accused men in this room are rapists.”

Nine jurors – five men and four women – are hearing the case along with three judges. A verdict is expected on Thursday.