A French pensioner went on trial on Monday for allowing scores of strangers to rape his wife after drugging her, in a case that has horrified the country.

Fifty men, whom he recruited online, are also being tried in the southern city of Avignon alongside the main suspect, a 71-year-old former employee of France’s power utility company, EDF.

Police counted a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified.

The men, aged between 26 and 74, are accused of raping the 72-year-old woman who, according to her lawyers, was so heavily sedated that she was unaware of the abuse, which continued for a decade.

The trial will be “a horrible ordeal” for her, said Antoine Camus, one of her lawyers.

“For the first time, she will have to relive the rapes that she endured over 10 years,” he told AFP, adding that his client had “no recollection” of the abuse, which she only discovered in 2020.

The woman, who appeared in court supported by her three children, could have opted for a trial behind closed doors, but “that’s what her attackers would have wanted,” Camus said.

Police began investigating the defendant, Dominique P., in September 2020 when he was caught by a security guard secretly filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping centre.

Police said they found hundreds of pictures and videos of his wife on his computer, visibly unconscious and mostly in the foetal position.

The Images are alleged to show dozens of rapes in the couple’s home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people some 33 kilometres (21 miles) from Avignon in Provence.

Investigators also found chats on a site called coco.fr, which has since been shut down by police, in which he recruited strangers to come to their home and have intercourse with his wife.

Dominique P. admitted to investigators that he gave his wife powerful tranquillisers, particularly Temesta, an anxiety-reducing drug.

The abuse began In 2011 when the couple was living near Paris and continued after they moved to Mazan two years later.

The husband participated in the rapes, filmed them, and encouraged the other men using degrading language, according to prosecutors.

No money changed hands.

The accused rapists included a forklift driver, a fire brigade officer, a company boss, and a journalist.

Some were single, others married or divorced, and some were family men. Most participated just once, but some took part up to six times.

Their defence has been that they simply helped a libertine couple live out its fantasies, but Dominique P. told investigators that all were aware that his wife had been drugged without her knowledge.

An expert said her state “was closer to a coma than to sleep.”

Her husband told prosecutors that only three men left the house quickly after arriving, while all others proceeded to have intercourse with his wife.

Dominique P., who said he was raped by a male nurse when he was nine, is prepared to face “his family and his wife,” his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told AFP.

This trial may not be his last. He has also been charged with a 1991 murder and rape, which he denies, and an attempted rape in 1999, to which he admitted after DNA testing.

Experts said the man does not appear to be mentally ill, but in documents seen by AFP, they stated that he needed to feel “all-powerful” over the female body.

The trial is due to last until December 20. (AFP: Text, Excluding Headline)

•Caroline Darian (L) stands next to her brother Florian P. , at the courthouse during the trial of their father accused of drugging their mother for nearly ten years and inviting strangers to rape her at their home in Mazan, a small town in the south of France, in Avignon, on September 2, 2024.

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