Dominique Pélicot, 71, faces up to 20 years in prison if found guilty following his trial at Vaucluse Criminal Court, in Avignon.
He and 51 other male defendants are charged with “aggravated rape” following multiple videoed attacks on Gisèle Pélicot, 72.
But the horrific case may never have come to light had Pélicot not been arrested in 2020 in a supermarket in Carpentras for filming up the skirts of other customers.
When police searched his camera phone, and equipment kept at his home, they found thousands of photos and videos of the abuse.
Rapists involved in the case include civil servants, ambulance workers, soldiers, prison guards, nurses, a journalist, a municipal councillor, and truck drivers.
On Tuesday, it emerged that the couple’s child – Caroline Darian – was pictured with no clothes on, almost certainly while drugged.
Mr Pélicot kept the images in a computer file entitled “Around my daughter, naked,” the court heard.
When Presiding Judge Roger Arata began reading out details of the pictures, Ms Darian – who was in the public gallery – collapsed in tears, and had to leave the court building for around 20 minutes.
Ms Darian, now in her 40s, has already written a book about the case called “And I stopped calling you Daddy”, which the Judge quoted from in court.
She said she was “haunted by the fear” that her father may have invited men to rape her too, adding: “I’m convinced I was drugged, but he’ll never admit it.”
The family home, in Mazan, some 20 miles from Avignon, became a crime scene over at least a decade, when streams of men were invited to attack Ms Pélicot.
Her diabolical white husband is said to have used an online libertine platform to contact them between 2011 and 2020.
Detectives have listed a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom have been identified.
They are all being tried alongside Mr Pélicot , a former employee at French utility company, EDF (Electricity of France).
One of 51 accused said he thought that the presence of cameras made the rapes legal, the court heard.
Judge Arata said the unnamed man told police: “It couldn’t have been anything bad because it was all filmed.”
Another defendant told detectives he thought Ms Pélicot was “play-acting at being asleep,” as part of a libertine fantasy.
“The victim was not asleep, but unconscious, which explains why the incident lasted so long,’ said the Judge.
Ms Pélicot, a frail mother-of-three, was supported by her two adult sons as she remained in the public gallery on Tuesday, the second day of the trial.
The diabolical white cuckold was a multiple rapist who moved his family from greater Paris in 1991, and later set up the sex ring.
It involved advertising on a site for ‘partners’ on an online forum called ‘Without Her Knowing’.
Participants would discuss performing acts on unwitting partners, and then film their depravity, before storing the videos on a USB drive dubbed “Abuses”.
In Pélicot’s case, the data eventually fell into the hand of police, who confirmed it enabled them to identify the 92 cases of rape.
Of the 72 men involved, 51 aged between 26 and 73 were identified and arrested by the police.
Mr Pélicot is said to have sedated his wife by putting tablets of Temesta – a powerful anxiolytic – into her evening dinner.
He then invited strangers from the online forum into the couple’s bedroom, so that his wife could be raped while unconscious.
All were told to wash their hands, and not to wear aftershave, so she would not sense they were strangers.
In a separate case, Mr Pélicot has been charged with raping and murdering a 23-year-old estate agent in Paris in 1991.
He has admitted one attempted rape in 1999, after DNA testing proved a case against him.
The Avignon aggravated rape case continues, and is due to last until December 21.
Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/12366248/true-horrors-drugged-wife-men-rape-upskirting-women/
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