A court sentenced Mr. Pelicot to 20 years after he admitted to drugging and raping his wife, Gisèle, for nearly a decade, and inviting strangers to join him. The case has made her a feminist hero.

It was something in Dominique Pelicot's swagger, his "élan" - as the French might put it - that immediately struck the psychiatrist as odd. There he stood. A 68-year-old pensioner who had already spent several months inside one of France's most notorious prisons,