The trial of a man accused of drugging his wife and allowing her to be raped over 90 times has begun in south-east France.
The 71-year old is accused of administering powerful drugs to his wife without her knowledge to make her unconscious and stop her remembering the rapes.
He then is accused of advertising her as ‘available to rape’ on a dating website, where dozens of men – up to 72 according to authorities – signed up to have sex with her.
Some are accused of raping her multiple times.
The victim “is determined to confront their gaze, starting with that of her ex-husband,” said her lawyer Antoine Camus to Agence France Presse.
The trial will be ‘difficult’ because it will include video evidence of the assaults and thus “for the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured,” he added.
Five judges in the Vaucluse department will go over the case for the next two months.
It is extremely likely the husband, and some of his accomplices, will be given hefty sentences.
Caught filming up women’s skirts in supermarkets
The husband - referred to as Dominique P (an alias to be used during the trial) - was apprehended in September 2020 for ‘upskirting’ – taking photos up women’s skirts without their knowledge – in a supermarket in Carpentras, Vaucluse.
He was using a camera phone attached to a bag to take the videos, and said he was doing it whilst his wife was away and he was lonely.
However, when police went to his home to look for evidence seized his laptop they found a file labelled ‘abuses’.
It contained over 20,000 images and videos of his wife being assaulted by various men over the previous nine years.
His wife was told about the photos and videos at the local police station. She was completely unaware they existed.
“He disgusts me, I feel dirty, defiled, betrayed. It was a tsunami, I was hit by a high-speed train,” she said when recalling the events in front of the judges when the trial began.
The alleged rapes began in 2011, when the couple still lived in Paris, before they retired to the south of France where they then continued.
The husband is accused of advertising his wife on a dating site called coco.fr (which has since been shut down for its implication in multiple criminal cases). The profile name was ‘A son insu’ (without her knowing).
Men would then chat with Dominique P and arrange a time to visit the couple’s home to rape her.
They agreed to a number of rules including parking a certain distance from the property, not smelling of certain strong scents that would wake her, and warming their hands on a radiator to keep her asleep as they touched her.
They did not pay Dominique P to have sex with her, and he often watched.
Read more: Gérard Depardieu: French prosecutors call for rape trial
Dozens of men arrested
The majority of men arrested relating to the case do not have a criminal record and many have wives and children. They were aged between 30 and 74.
Police arrested them over seven waves and, whilst not everyone was apprehended, the majority were taken in for questioning.
Authorities believe 72 men raped Dominique P’s wife over the time period. Between them, they allegedly committed 92 rapes. Some have since died.
Two men backed out but only one, who originally believed it to be a case of voyeurism which the wife would be party to, did so because he believed it would constitute rape.
Neither of the two contacted police, although one said he regretted not having done so.
Certain individuals have accepted that they raped the woman, however some still claim it was part of a roleplay from the couple – with the wife having consented prior – or that she was merely pretending to be asleep.
Others were quoted as saying “It's not rape, since it was her husband who proposed [to let them have sex with her].”
Some of those arrested however accepted that they had assaulted the woman without her knowledge, and are guilty of committing an act of rape.
Evidence shows that the wife was not merely asleep, but in a coma-like state due to the effects of the drugs.
Since being told of what had happened, she remembers certain hazy details of events immediately prior to some of the rapes.
This includes being handed a beer by her husband with a funny colour, which she asked him to take back to the shops but he insisted on her drinking before pouring the rest down the sink.
The couple have since divorced. Their children will attend the case to support their mother.
One of their daughters wrote a book about the events prior to the trial, called Et j'ai cessé de t'appeler Papa (and I stopped calling you dad), detailing her anger over the events.
Read more: Australian woman allegedly raped by several men in Paris
