A harrowing case of rapes was reported from France. A man is accused of drugging his wife and inviting dozens of men to rape her while she was unconscious.
The trial started on Monday and is expected to last until December.
Dominique Pelicot, 71, is accused of recruiting 72 men from an online platform to assault his wife Gisele, starting in 2011.
The victim, in her 70s, discovered the abuse only in 2020 when her husband, with whom she lived for 50 years, was caught filming up women’s skirts in a shopping center.
When police started an investigation, they found more than 20,000 photos and videos of Gisele while she was unconscious. Many images show the dozens of rapes she endured while at the couple’s home in Mazan, a small town northeast of Avignon. He had dated and labeled the photos and videos in a folder titled “abuse.”
Investigators also found chats on a website Dominique used to recruit the strangers to assault his wife.
Dominque admitted giving his wife powerful tranquilizers before the rapes occurred. He said he never asked for or accepted money.
Police have identified 51 of the 72 men involved in the alleged rape ring, and believe they committed 92 rapes in total.
Some are said to have taken part just once, while others went back multiple times.
These 51 men being tried alongside Dominique, who is a former employee of EDF, France's state-owned electricity company.
As per reports, Dominque followed strict protocols so that his wife wouldn’t wake up.
The alleged rapists - who are between the ages of 21 and 68 and include a forklift driver, a firefighter and a journalist - weren’t allowed to wear aftershave or smoke cigarettes beforehand, had to wash their hands in hot water and were forced to undress in the kitchen so they wouldn’t mistakenly leave any clothes behind, reports said.
At the end of each night, according to the investigators, he cleaned his wife’s body.
The husband both filmed the rapes and took part in them - even encouraging the men to use degrading language on his wife.
Many of the accused men told cops that they believed the couple had consented the assault as part of their sex fantasy.
Dominique has also been charged with a 1991 rape and murder, which he has denied, as well as a 1999 attempted rape, to which he admitted.
A lawyer for the victim said the trial would be a "horrible ordeal" for his client, who married her husband in 1973.
"For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over ten years," he said.
"She could have chosen a trial behind closed doors, but "that's what her attackers would have wanted," said the lawyer.
Gisele will be present at the trial alongside her children.
She said, "He disgusts me, I feel dirty, soiled, betrayed. It’s a tsunami, I’ve been hit by a high-speed train."
Before the investigation began, Gisele had started to believe she had some kind of illness because of her frequent unexplained tiredness.