Pensioner waives her anonymity in mass rape trial that has horrified France

A 72-year-old French woman has waived her anonymity to face more than 50 men accused of sexually assaulting her while she was allegedly drugged unconscious by her husband.

Mother-of-three Gisele Pelicot insisted she wants her rape trial to be in the public eye so this “never happens again”.

“I feel dirty, soiled betrayed. It’s a tsunami. I’ve been hit by a high-speed train,” she said as trial proceedings opened at Vaucluse Criminal Court in Avignon in a case that has shocked France.

All the men are accused of aggravated rape. Twenty of them, including husband Dominique Pelicot, are in custody, while the others remain on bail.

Prosecutors allege that dozens of men raped Ms Pelicot 92 times at her home in Mazan in a warped online group orchestrated by her husband.

The total number of men is not known, though 51 have been identified, with some accused of sexually assaulting Ms Pelicot more than once.

The men on trial were aged from 21 to 68 at the time of the alleged rapes and include a fireman, lorry driver, prison guard, nurse and a journalist.

The accused include fathers and people who are married, divorced and single.

Her husband is accused of using a website to contact the men between 2011 and 2020.

When asked to confirm his name and address at the start of proceedings, Pelicot said: “My home is prison, you know it.”

Ms Pelicot, a mother-of-three, was joined by her adult children as she watched the proceedings in the public gallery.

Speaking about her husband, she said: “He disgusts me.”

Ms Pelicot’s lawyer, Antoine Camus said: “She could have opted for a closed trial, but that’s what her attackers would have wanted.”

Another of her lawyers, Stephane Babonneau, added: “She wants to raise awareness, as widely as possible, of what happened to her so that events like these never happen again.”

Pelicot, 71, was originally investigated by police in September 2020 after he was caught by a security guard trying to secretly upskirt three women in a shopping centre.

From there, prosecutors say police uncovered thousands of pictures and videos of his wife, visibly unconscious, on his computer.

Each of the alleged sexual assaults were filmed and kept on a USB-drive.

Prior to the investigation, Ms Pelicot had said she thought she had some kind of illness due to her frequent unexplained tiredness.

Pelicot is said to have sedated his wife by putting powerful tablets into her evening dinner.

It’s alleged strangers were then invited over, told to wash their hands, not wear aftershave or smoke tobacco, so she would not sense they were strangers.

The accused men claim they were unaware that Ms Pelicot had been drugged.

However, her husband said each of the men who slept with his wife “knew she was drugged” without her knowledge – and that any of them could have left at any time.

The trial is expected to last four months.