A mum who was allegedly raped by multiple strangers after being drugged by her own husband today faced them all in a packed court room.

Gisèle Pélicot, a 72-year-old French woman, waived her legal right to anonymity on Monday at the opening of the trial of Dominique Pélicot, 71, and 51 other men.

All are accused of aggravated rape in a trial at the Vaucluse Criminal Court, in Avignon, which is due to last for four months. Twenty of them, including Pélicot, are in custody, while the others remain on bail.

Asked to confirm his name and address at the start of proceedings, Pélicot said: “My home is prison, you know it”. Ms Pélicot, a mother-of-three, was supported by her adult children as she stood in the public gallery, listening to evidence.

The family home, in nearby Mazan, allegedly became a crime scene over almost a decade, when streams of men were invited to attack Ms Pélicot. Her husband is said to have used an online platform called coco.fr to contact them between 2011 and 2020.

    • Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      What got me was the one guy who said it wasn’t rape because “It’s his wife, he does what he likes with her." Tf kind of reasoning even is that?!

      • norimee@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Marital rape only became a crime in the mid -late 1990’s in most countries.

        Before that it was really like that before the law. She’s his wife? He has a right to her body.

      • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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        1 month ago

        You’re talking about the frontrunner for the GOP, presidential candidate, as well as a private individual who never raped anybody. And, of course, understand that by the very definition, you can’t rape your spouse.

        -Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      1 month ago

      Holy shit, how does it get worse. Of course it does. The daughter:

      Ms Darian told Le Parisien this week that she was haunted by the fear her father may have invited some of the men to rape her after a picture of her “in someone else’s underwear” was found on his computer.

      Gisèle Pélicot has waived her right to anonymity to insist that her rape trial remains public so “this never happens again”.

      Mrs Pélicot insisted the trial should not go on behind closed doors because “that’s what her attackers would have wanted”, said Antoine Camus, one of her lawyers.

      This lady is a fucking badass. I can’t respect anyone more than I respect her for this move.

  • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 month ago

    Sometimes people will do things so fucked up you’d never imagined them before. This is one.

  • BalooWasWahoo@links.hackliberty.org
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    1 month ago

    2011 through 2020… That is both frightening in its length and disturbing that he was able to get (invite) that many men to do this and it was never discovered.

  • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    How do you find and arrange 50 men with no conscience to participate? Holy shit.

    Oh, it wasn’t all at once…

  • Crikeste@lemm.ee
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    1 month ago

    So the guy would have been in his 50’s when he started doing this? Maybe it’s just me, but feels like there’s probably much more victims out there.