This story contains sad details.
A man has been tried in France for taking drugs and repeatedly raping his wife and arranging for more men to rape her.
The accused, identified as Dominique P, 71, is accused of hiring strangers on the internet to come to his home and sexually assault the victim for more than a decade.
The woman was so depressed she was unaware of the repeated abuse, her lawyers said.
This case has shocked France with its high level of serious crimes.
Police identified at least 92 rapes committed by 72 men. 50 people were identified and charged and are standing in court together with the husband.
The victim, now 72, only found out about the abuse in 2020 after being reported to the police.
The trial will be a “bad test” for him, said his lawyer Antoine Camus, as it will be the first time he has seen the video evidence of the torture.
“For the first time, she will have to face the rape she endured for 10 years,” he told AFP.
Dominique P was investigated by police after an incident in September 2020, when a security guard caught him secretly filming up the skirts of three women in a shopping mall.
The police then found hundreds of pictures and videos of his wife on his computer and she appeared unconscious.
These photos are suspected to show a number of incidents of attacks in the couple’s home. The abuse allegedly started in 2011.
The investigators also found conversations on the website where Dominique P is accused of inciting strangers to come to them and rape his wife.
He admitted to investigators that he gave his wife powerful sedatives, including an anti-anxiety drug called Temesta.
He is accused of being a part of these incidents of rape, taking pictures and encouraging other men to use abusive language according to the prosecutors.
No money is said to have changed hands.
The accused rapists – aged between 26 and 74 – came from all walks of life and while most of them participated once, some participated six times, according to prosecutors.
Their defense is that they were helping the couple to live as they think but Dominique P told the investigators that everyone knows that his wife was drugged without his knowledge.
The specialist said his condition was “closer to unconsciousness than to sleep”.
Dominique P, who said he was raped at the age of nine, is ready to face “his family and his wife”, his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told AFP.
He was also charged with murder and rape in 1991, which he denied, and attempted rape in 1999, which he admitted to after a DNA test.
The trial, held at the Parc des Expositions in Avignon, southern France, is expected to continue until December 20.
On Monday, which is the opening day of the trial, the woman appeared in court supported by her three children, reported AFP.
Mr Camus, his lawyer, said he would have preferred a closed-door trial, but “that’s what his attackers would have wanted”.
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