French Woman To Testify On Decade-long Drug Rape Trauma

A French woman whose husband has admitted to drugging her repeatedly over 10 years so she could be raped by dozens of strangers will take the stand Thursday in the mass trial of 51 of her alleged abusers.

Gisele P., now 72, has remained stoic and silent through the three first days of the high-profile case in the southern city of Avignon, communicating through her lawyers.

But she has insisted that the trial take place in public so the full facts of the case emerge.

There will be "extremely difficult moments" for her as she testifies, said Stephane Babonneau, one of Gisele P.'s two lawyers.

First glimmers of defence strategy appeared on Wednesday as some lawyers asked investigators whether Gisele P. and her husband had a libertine relationship, or whether it was credible that she had noticed nothing for the entire decade of the abuse.

The line of questioning appeared to upset the closely listening plaintiff, though she stayed when her three children briefly left the courtroom in disgust.

"Of course she was offended," said Antoine Camus, her second lawyer.

"She wanted to respond, we felt her bobbing up and down behind us, saying 'I want to answer, I just have to answer', and we told her, 'tomorrow!'"

Gisele P.'s husband, Dominique, is accused of abusing his wife between 2011 and 2020, drugging her with sleeping pills and then recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her, lead investigator Jeremie Bosse Platiere told the court on Wednesday.

Dominique P. was exposed by chance when he was caught filming up women's skirts in a local supermarket.

On Tuesday he answered "yes" when asked if he was guilty of the accusations against him.

The 71-year-old retiree documented his actions with meticulous precision on a hard drive with a folder labelled "abuse", allowing French police to track down more than 50 men suspected of raping her while she was drugged.

One-third were identified with facial recognition software, Bosse Platiere said.

The Hautes-Alpes interdepartmental police chief said he had hand-picked "people who had the stomach to face" videos and images of abuse while sifting through documents such as telephone bills.

Police drew up a list of 72 individuals suspected of abusing Gisele P.

The investigators counted around 200 instances of rape, most of them by Dominique P., and over 90 by strangers enlisted through an adult website.

The assaults took place between July 2011 and October 2020, mainly in the couple's home in Mazan, a village of 6,000 people in the southern region of Provence.

Most suspects face up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape if convicted.

Eighteen of the 51 accused including Dominique P. are in custody, while 32 other defendants are attending the trial as free men.

The last one, still at large, will be judged in absentia.

The trial is expected to last four months until December 20 -- "a totally awful ordeal" for Gisele P., Camus said.

"For the first time, she will experience the rapes to which she was subjected to for ten years", of which she has "no memory", he told AFP.