'The only victim in this room is me': Pelicot confronts rapist who forced her back into court

The only man to appeal his sentence - out of the 51 convicted last year - has lost his case. But campaigners fear old attitudes remain.

- Kim Willsher reports from Nîmes

It was a judgment that surprised no one. The only man to challenge his conviction for raping Gisèle Pelicot while she was drugged and unconscious was found guilty on appeal on Thursday. Husamettin Dogan, a 44-year-old unemployed builder, also saw his sentence for aggravated rape increased from nine to 10 years.

The four-day hearing was a concentrated rerun of the historic three-and-a-half month trial in Avignon that ended last December with the conviction of 51 men for rape or sexual abuse, including Pelicot’s husband, Dominique, one of France’s worst sexual predators, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

For almost a decade, he had laced his wife’s food and drink with a cocktail of drugs, rendering her virtually comatose, and invited strangers recruited from an online chatroom into their home to rape her inanimate body while he filmed them.

But the energy and optimism that accompanied Pelicot’s transformation into an international feminist icon for waiving her anonymity in Avignon and insisting “shame changes sides” has dissipated in France over the last year.

Legislation to define “consent” is currently held up in a parliament paralysed by political chaos; rape and sexual violence cases increased by 9% last year, according to official figures. Attitudes have been slow to evolve.

For the women who clapped Pelicot into and out of the 19th-century courthouse in Nîmes last week, there was a question of what had it all been for.