By Juliette Jabkhiro

PARIS (Reuters) -Senators approved changes to France’s rape law on Wednesday to include consent, bringing the legislation more into line with more than a dozen other European countries in a move that was given new impetus by the Gisele Pelicot mass rape trial.

French criminal law has until now defined rape as a penetrative act or oral sex act committed on someone using “violence, coercion, threat or surprise”. It did not make clear mention of the need for consent and prosecutors had to prove the intention to rape to secure a guilty verdict.

Last December Gisele Pelicot’s husband admitted to a court in southern France that he had repeatedly drugged his wife and recruited dozens of men online to rape her while she was unconscious.

At least 35 of Dominique Pelicot’s c

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