A court in southern France has increased by a year the jail term of the only man who challenged his conviction for raping Gisèle Pelicot.
The 72-year-old retired grandmother was drugged unconscious by her then-husband Dominique for over a decade and raped by dozens of men he recruited on the internet.
Husamettin Dogan, 44, had argued he was innocent, despite graphic video footage shown in court of him penetrating a motionless Gisèle Pelicot.
But the court of appeal in Nîmes rejected his argument and extended his original nine-year jail term to 10 years. He was convicted of aggravated rape last December, during a trial in which 50 other men were convicted.
Public prosecutor Dominique Sié had asked the court to impose a 12-year term on Dogan, who said he himself had been a victim, trapped by Dominique Pelicot. The prosecutor told the court Dogan had been unwilling to take responsibility for a massive act of destruction of a woman that had denied her humanity.
Although Dogan was held in pre-trial detention ahead of last year's trial, he has not spent time in jail since.
Police were able to track down the men who raped Gisèle because of the videos that Dominique Pelicot filmed during the rapes.
Of the 51 men handed jail terms, 17 initially lodged appeals only to withdraw them soon after. Husamettin Dogan - a Turkish-born married father - was the only one who decided to take his appeal to court.
Like many of the other men convicted last December, Dogan's defence was he could not be guilty of raping Gisèle because he did not realise she had been drugged by her husband against her will.
Proceedings in Nîmes were effectively a retrial but, unlike the initial trial last December, this case was judged by a jury made up of nine members of the public and three professional judges.
Evidence from the first trial was shown again, including videos of the rapes in which an unconscious Gisèle could be heard snoring and having no reaction despite the abuse she was subjected to. Nevertheless, Dogan again denied any intention to rape her even though he acknowledged she was clearly a victim of her husband.
Gisèle Pelicot told the court this week I am the only victim, denying she had ever given her consent.
She again stressed she had no knowledge of what her husband subjected her to.
Her decision to open up the original trial to the public and the media attracted worldwide attention on her story, but as soon as the verdicts came in, she retreated back to private life.
This week was the first time she had been seen in public since then. When she took the stand on Wednesday, she recalled the unexplained neurological symptoms and memory loss she had suffered for months, without realizing they were the side effects of the drugs Pelicot had plied her with.
As in the original trial, Gisèle ended her statement with a thought for other victims of rape – the majority of whom did not have the wealth of evidence that she had to bring her abusers to court. I want to say to them to never be ashamed of what was inflicted upon us, because it is not their fault, she said.
