A French woman whose husband allegedly victimized her over a period of nearly a decade her by drugging her and procuring dozens of strange men to rape her while she was unconscious has waived her anonymity and will appear in a publicized trial.
Gisele P., 72, stood in a courtroom in Avignon for the first time alongside her three children as the trial of Dominique P., 71, began on Monday morning, the Daily Mail reported.
In a case that shocked the nation and the world, Dominique is accused of using the since-banned online chat site Coco.fr to arrange for at least 72 men to come to his home in Mazan and rape Gisele while she was under the effects of potent tranquilizers.
The disgraced husband is also accused of recording these heinous acts — with police saying they found hundreds of images and videos on Dominique’s computer of a visibly unconscious Gisele being violated in her own home. The investigation was launched due to a shopping center security guard reporting him for secretly filming up women’s skirts in September 2020.
Investigators said Gisele was seen in the sick recordings in the fetal position, and an expert told prosecutors that her state “was closer to a coma than to sleep.”
The rapes started in 2011 and lasted until 2020, and occurred at least 92 times, police said.
Out of the 72 suspects, 51 have been identified and are also standing trial for their alleged roles in the shocking rapes.
While Gisele had the option to keep her identity private, Judge Roger Arata granted her wish to allow for “complete publicity until the end” of the trial, her lawyer, Stephane Babonneau, said.
According to another one of her lawyers, Antoine Camus, Gisele decided to shed her anonymity because “her attackers would have wanted” her to remain anonymous.
Though she has mustered the strength to publicly stand in the courtroom, Camus added that it will be “a horrible ordeal” for Gisele.
“For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years,” he said, noting that the victim had “no recollection” of the alleged events.
Gisele, who met Dominique in 1971 before marrying two years later and having three children together, said that her husband had once requested to try swinging as a couple but she declined.
Despite his sexual requests, she said Dominique behaved as a “great guy” with a “normal sexuality.”
The couple’s eldest son and their daughter also said that he was a good father and they did not notice his alleged sick acts.
Coco.fr, which was shut down in a collaboration between Bulgarian, Dutch, French, German, Hungarian, and Lithuanian law enforcement earlier this year, was allegedly used by Dominique to recruit the rapists.
According to the Daily Mail, Dominique has already admitted over the course of the investigation to secretly drugging his wife, especially with the powerful anxiety-reducing drug Temesta.
He told prosecutors the rules he would give to the men who came over so the rapes would remain unsuspected, such as telling them to refrain from smelling like perfume or tobacco and to run their hands under hot water so as to not wake Gisele while touching her.
“The attackers would park a few minutes from the couple’s home and undress in the kitchen. No money changed hands,” the outlet detailed.
While most of the accused rapists only had one encounter at the couple’s home, some reportedly came back as many as six times.
The strangers’ defense lawyers have claimed that they were participating in a consensual sexual fantasy, but that has been contrasted by Dominique’s own admission that they were all aware that Gisele was drugged without her knowledge or consent.
Dominique also told investigators that he was raped by a male nurse as a child.
His lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro, said the alleged predator is finally ready to face “his family and his wife.”
“He is ashamed of what he did, it is unforgivable,” the attorney told reporters, saying the crimes were “a form of addiction.”
“My client’s line of conduct is that he recognises what he did and there has not been an ounce of protest since the beginning.”
Dominique has also since been charged with a 1991 murder and rape, which he has denied, and a 1999 attempted rape that he admitted to after DNA linked him to the crime.
It is unclear when the trials for those cases will begin.