French man accused of recruiting over 50 strangers to rape wife after drugging her

A 70-year-old French woman has accused her husband of recruiting more than a dozen strangers online to rape her while drugging her into unconsciousness. The man, a 71-year-old ex-employee at France’s power utility EDF, is going on trial in the case, along with 50 other men accused of raping the elderly woman.

The woman endured the rapes over 10 years and was not aware of the abuse as she was heavily sedated, Antoine Camus, one of her lawyers, told news agency AFP.

“She is completely determined to face them and her husband, with whom she lived for 50 years but whom she knew nothing about, as she discovered at 68,” the lawyer was quoted as saying by CBS News in its report.

The abuse began in 2011, when the couple was living near Paris, and went on till they shifted to Mazan two years later.

The man used a now-inoperative site called coco.fr to hire strangers to sexually assault his wife, chat logs discovered by the police revealed. The husband gave the woman powerful tranquillisers, especially Temesta, an anxiety-reducing drug.

He also told the men not to wake her up when they abused her during the night.

Amongst other instructions, no aftershave or cigarette odour was permitted, and they had to warm their hands before touching her and get undressed in the kitchen so they wouldn’t leave their clothes behind in the bathroom.

The suspect also took part in the rapes, recorded them, and encouraged other men to use abusive language, according to the prosecutors.

In September 2020, the police began probing the woman’s husband, the main suspect, after he was caught secretly filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping centre.

The police searched his computer, where they discovered thousands of images and videos of his wife. In the images and the videos, she was unconscious. The recordings revealed multiple incidents of rape. The abuse occurred in their home in Mazan, a small village near Avigon.

The police identified 72 men involved in 92 cases of rape, with 51 suspects formally detained.

The accused, from 21 to 68 years old, held various professions, including a forklift driver, fire officer, company executive, and journalist, and claimed that they were merely fulfilling the fantasies of a consenting couple. However, Dominique told police that the men were aware that his wife had been drugged without her knowledge. Only three men went without participating, while the others committed the assault.

The trial in the case is slated to run till December.