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The French woman, who endured nearly a decade of rapes by scores of men after being drugged by her ex-husband, is expected to attend court in France once more this Monday. This follows one of the men convicted of raping her filed an appeal, leading to a second trial.

Pelicot became a feminist icon after choosing to waive her right to privacy during the 2024 trial involving her ex-husband and 50 other men. Her lawyer, Antoine Camus, stated that while she would have rather avoided the ordeal of another trial, she will be in attendance throughout the multi-day appeal at the Nîmes court in the south of France.

“She will be there to explain that a rape is a rape, that there is no concept as a minor assault,” Camus told reporters.

Husamettin Dogan, a 44-year-old builder given to nine years in prison for raping Pelicot, has challenged his conviction. The first trial revealed that Dogan contacted her then-husband through a chatroom and drove to their home the same night in June 2019, telling his own wife he was leaving. He was found guilty of raping Gisèle Pelicot while she was incapacitated.

Dogan asserted during the first trial that he believed it was just a game. “I’m not a rapist, that’s too heavy for me to accept,” he said. His legal representative refused to comment before the appeal.

Initially, 17 of the 51 convicted men signaled they would appeal, but 16 dropped out over time, leaving only one appeal proceeding.

Dominique Pelicot, considered one of the most notorious sex offenders in recent French memory, was sentenced 20 years in prison for drugging his then-wife and arranging for numerous men to rape her at their home in southern France over nearly a decade of marriage.

Testimony in last year’s trial revealed that Dominique Pelicot had mixed sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication into his wife’s mashed potato or drinks, then invited men to assault her in the village of Mazan in the French countryside. A total of 50 other men were found guilty in the case.

Now serving a prison sentence in isolation, Dominique Pelicot is scheduled to appear as a witness at the appeal. He is expected to restate his previous testimony: “I admit to being a perpetrator and all the accused men in this room are rapists.”

Gisèle Pelicot, a 72-year-old former supply chain professional, had demanded that the initial trial be held publicly to educate the public about assault under sedation. “It’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them,” she stated in court.

The case generated a massive impact worldwide, with feminist organizations across all continents supporting Gisèle Pelicot and international figures releasing statements in her support.

However, campaigners and lawyers noted that the case exposed how widespread and frequent rape and sexual violence continues to be.

In a recent case, a 46-year-old man in Normandy was sentenced 12 years in prison for raping his partner while she was asleep on several occasions in 2022. Similar to Dominique Pelicot, he first came to police attention for filming up a woman’s skirt in a supermarket, and investigators later discovered videos of the assaults on his electronic devices.

The appeal in the Pelicot case occurs amid growing criticism of the French justice system’s handling of rape. Several damning reports since the first trial have shown that the system continues to fail rape complainants on a large scale.

This year, the European Court of Human Rights condemned France for “failing to protect” the rights of three teenagers who disclosed rape.

One teenager who accused more than a dozen firefighters of abuse was found to have suffered “re-traumatization and discriminatory treatment” by the French justice system, which did not act to protect her dignity “by permitting the use of judgmental and guilt-inducing statements, which reinforced gender stereotypes.”

In another instance, France was found to have breached the European Convention on Human Rights in the case of a hospital pharmacist who filed a rape complaint against her supervisor.

This month, the High Council for Equality, an advisory body attached to the French prime minister’s office, reported that despite a threefold increase in rape complaints in France since the global #MeToo movement in 2016, the number of cases proceeding to trial remains alarmingly small, with only 3.3% of complaints leading to convictions.

More than 130 feminist groups are advocating for comprehensive changes at every level of the French justice system in dealing with rape, calling for major funding increases and improved state support and prevention.

“The Pelicot case was a kind of electric shock, it enabled a lot of people to talk about rape and spousal assault. However, there has not really been a political response. There is a great deal lacking in France, and major flaws [in the justice system],” said Anne-Cécile Mailfert of the Fondation des Femmes.

Separately, parliament is currently considering adding a consent-based definition of rape into French law.

Marie-Charlotte Garin, a Green MP who backs rewording the law, stated that the Pelicot case had transformed French society’s understanding of consent and that updating the legal wording would help “a societal shift to move from a tolerance of assault to a respect for autonomy.”

However, Garin emphasized that wording by itself is insufficient to address persistent “failures” of the entire French state toward rape survivors. “It requires a overhaul in the system to improve how we deal with rape,” she said.