French pensioner on trial for drugging wife, allowing 50 men to rape her
The 71-year-old man, who recruited the men online, faces charges alongside 50 other defendants in a case that has shocked France
A French pensioner went on trial Monday for allowing scores of strangers to rape his wife after he drugged her, in a case that has horrified the country.
Fifty men, who he recruited online, are also being tried in the southern city of Avignon alongside the main suspect, a 71-year-old former employee at France’s power utility company, EDF.
Police counted a total of 92 rapes committed by 72 men, 51 of whom were identified.
The men, aged between 26 and 74, are accused of raping the 72-year-old woman who, her lawyers say, was so heavily sedated she was not aware of the abuse, that went on for a decade.
The trial will be “a horrible ordeal” for her, said Antoine Camus, one of her lawyers.
“For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years,” he said, adding that his client had “no recollection” of the abuse, which she only discovered in 2020.
