Nîmes to hear appeal by one man in 51-conviction sedated-woman case

Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman who in December 2024 saw 51 men convicted of sexually assaulting her while she was sedated by her then husband, returned to court on Monday in Nîmes as the only one of those men to have maintained an appeal prepared to face a jury. The appeal by 44 year old Husamettin D. challenges both his nine year sentence and the finding of criminal responsibility; the hearing is scheduled to last several days before the Gard criminal court of appeal.

Prosecutors and defense teams say the case stems from a decade in which Pelicot, now 72, was repeatedly drugged by her husband, Dominique Pelicot, and abused by men he recruited online. The initial trial in Avignon, which ran for nearly four months and ended in December, convicted 51 defendants of assault, attempted assault or sexual assault. Sentences in that trial ranged from partially suspended three year terms to 20 years in prison for Dominique Pelicot, who was sentenced for organising and facilitating the attacks and is serving his term in solitary confinement.

Unlike the mass courtroom proceedings in Avignon, the appeal in Nîmes focuses solely on Husamettin D., who was handed a nine year prison term in...