A French pensioner went on trial on Monday accused of drugging his wife and allowing several strangers to rape her; a case that has shocked the nation.
Fifty people recruited online are being tried in the southern city of Avignon alongside the main suspect, a 71-year-old former employee of France’s state-owned electric utility company EDF.
Police counted a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, of whom 51 were identified.
The men, ages 26 to 74, are accused of raping a 72-year-old woman. The woman’s lawyers say she was kept so sedated that she was unaware of the abuse, which continued for a decade.
According to Stephane Babonneau, a lawyer for the woman, presiding judge Roger Arata announced that all hearings would be public, fulfilling the woman’s wish to receive “full publicity” until the end of the court case.
“She wants to spread as much awareness as possible about what happened to her so that incidents like this never happen again,” Babonneau said.
Still, the trial would be “a terrible ordeal” for him, said another of his lawyers, Antoine Camus.
“For the first time, she will have to go through the rapes she has endured for 10 years,” he told AFP, adding that his client had “no memory” of the abuse and only found out about it in 2020.
Camus said the woman, who arrived at the court with her three children, did not want the hearing to be held behind closed doors because “that was what her attackers wanted.”
Some people came back six times.
Police began investigating the accused, Dominic P., in September 2020 after he was caught by a security guard secretly making videos under the skirts of three women at a shopping centre.
Police said they found hundreds of photos and videos of his wife on his computer, most of which showed her unconscious and in the foetal position.
The images allegedly show dozens of rapes in the couple’s home. Mazan is a village of 6,000 people about 33 kilometers (21 miles) from Avignon in Provence.
Investigators also found chats on a site called coco.fr, which has been shut down by police, in which he asked strangers to come to his home and have sex with his wife.
Dominic P. admitted to investigators that he had given his wife powerful tranquilizers, specifically Temesta, an anxiety-reducing medication.
The abuse began in 2011, when the couple were living near Paris, and continued even after they moved to Mazan two years later.
According to prosecutors, the husband participated in the rape, videotaped it and encouraged other men to do so while using abusive language.
No money changed hands.
The accused rapists include a forklift driver, a fire brigade officer, a company owner and a journalist.
Some were single, some were married or divorced, and some were family men. Most participated only once, but some participated up to six times.
Murder investigation
Many said they thought they were just helping a promiscuous couple live out their fantasies, but Dominic P. told investigators everyone knew his wife had been drugged without his knowledge.
One expert said his condition was “more like a coma than a sleep state.”
Her husband told prosecutors that only three of the men left the house immediately after arriving, while all of the others had sexual intercourse with his wife.
Dominic P., who said he was raped by a male nurse when he was nine, is ready to face “his family and his wife”, his lawyer Beatrice Zavaro told AFP on Monday morning.
“He is ashamed of what he has done. It is unforgivable,” he said, adding that the case was one of “a form of addiction”.
This case is probably not his last case.
He has also been charged with murder and rape in 1991, which he denies, and attempted rape in 1999, which he admitted after DNA testing.
Experts said the man did not appear to be mentally ill, but he had a feeling of “omnipotence” over female bodies, according to documents seen by AFP.
More than a dozen feminists dressed in black protested outside the court.
The trial will continue till December 20.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
