A French court said Tuesday, February 4, it would start hearing on October 6 the appeals of a dozen men convicted in a mass rape trial that horrified the country last year. A lower court in December sentenced Dominique Pelicot, 72, to 20 years in jail for repeatedly raping his then wife Gisèle Pelicot while she was drugged unconscious, and recruiting dozens of strangers online to rape her too.
It handed terms of three to 15 years to his 50 co-defendants, men aged 27 to 74 who joined in the abuse. Seventeen of them initially said they would appeal, but four then decided against it. This means up to 13 men could be appealing their sentences in front of a jury in the appeals court in the southern city of Nîmes from October 6 to November 21, although more could also drop out before the hearings start.
Dominique Pelicot is not appealing his verdict, though he could appear in the Nîmes court as a witness. Gisèle Pelicot, who has since divorced her husband and become a feminist icon for demanding the first trial be open to the public, is also expected to attend the new hearings. She was preparing to be present at the appeal process with "the same determination and the same courage," one of her lawyers, Antoine Camus, has said.
Dominique Pelicot is also being investigated in two separate cases dating back to the 1990s. He was questioned last week over a rape and murder in Paris in 1991, and an attempted rape in the Seine-et-Marne region outside the capital in 1999. He has denied involvement in the 1991 rape and murder case but has admitted to the 1999 attempted rape after his DNA was identified.