French dad’s sick ‘rules’ for 72 men who allegedly raped his wife while he filmed
A father-of-three accused of recruiting 72 men to rape his drugged wife while he filmed them allegedly had a list of rules for the strangers.
A father-of-three accused of allowing 72 men to rape his wife after he drugged her allegedly had a sickening list of rules for the strangers to ensure they didn’t wake her up.
Dominique P., 71, allegedly recruited the men on a dark online forum before inviting them over to the couple’s large home in the small southern French town of Mazan.
The retired electricity worker would crush powerful sleeping pills into his wife’s food and drink to knock her out.
She was so heavily sedated she was completely unaware about the alleged sexual abuse that went on for a decade between 2011 and 2020, her lawyers say.
The husband allegedly gave the men strict instructions to make sure his wife of 50 years remained unconscious as they sexually abused her during the night.
The men were banned from wearing cologne or smoking, had to have neat fingernails and were told to warm their hands under hot water so their touch wouldn’t jolt her awake.
They were also told to park a few minutes from the couple’s home and made to undress in the kitchen to minimise the chance of accidentally leaving clothes behind in the bedroom.
The husband took part in the rapes, filmed them and encouraged the other men to use degrading language, according to prosecutors.
The accused rapists include a forklift driver, a fire brigade officer, a company boss, a nurse, a prison guard and a journalist.
Some were single, others married or divorced, and some were family men.
Most participated just once, but some took part up to six times.
In court on Tuesday, the second day of a four-month trial, Dominique P. said “yes” when asked if he was guilty of the accusations against him.
The trial going forward will eventually determine his sentencing, as well a verdict on the charges against the other men involved in the sexual abuse.
‘Horrible ordeal’: Wife’s brave act
Dominique’s wife - 72-year-old Gisele P. – is attending the trial, which she has asked be open to the public, as are their daughter and two sons.
Presiding judge Roger Arata announced that all hearings would be public, granting the woman her wish for “complete publicity until the end” of the court case, according to one of her lawyers, Stephane Babonneau.
“She wants to raise awareness, as widely as possible, of what happened to her so that events like these never happen again,” Ms Babonneau said.
Another of her attorneys, Antoine Camus, said the trial would nonetheless be “a horrible ordeal” for her.
“For the first time, she will have to live through the rapes that she endured over 10 years,” he told AFP.
The woman, who arrived at the court for the first day of the trial on Monday supported by her three children, did not want a trial behind closed doors because “that’s what her attackers would have wanted”, Mr Camus said.
‘I stopped calling you dad’: Harrowing details emerge
Gisele’s daughter, who uses the pen name Caroline Darian, left the courtroom in tears less than 20 minutes after the start of the hearing on Tuesday.
Judge Arata recounted how naked photomontages of her had been found on Dominique P.’s computer in a folder titled “Around my daughter, naked”.
Ms Darian collapsed in tears and left the room trembling, escorted by her two brothers and her lawyer Antoine Camus, but reappeared some 20 minutes later.
For their children, “it’s immensely painful, unbearable”, the lawyer said afterwards.
“Even if they are not discovering anything new as they know the case, it was particularly gruelling this morning.”
Gisele P., wearing a white blouse, remained calm and reserved throughout the proceedings.
At the other end of the courtroom, but directly opposite her, sat her husband, dressed in a grey T-shirt and appearing emotionless.
She has commenced divorce proceedings.
As Ms Darian returned to the courtroom, she paused in front of the dock reserved for 18 of the accused who are in custody, including her father, but none looked her in the eye.
Some have already been sentenced for domestic violence or rape.
Ms Darian in 2022 wrote a book “Et j’ai cesse de t’appeler papa” (”And I stopped calling you dad”) about the effect of the discovery of the crimes on the family.
From time to time, Dominique P. glanced at some of the 32 other defendants attending the trial as free men in another part of the courtroom.
A 51st man is being judged in absentia.
Besides the husband, there are 72 suspects in the case but only 50 have been identified and tracked down.
Most of them face up to 20 years in jail for aggravated rape if convicted.
Many of the alleged rapists have said they thought they were simply helping a libertine couple live out its fantasies, but Dominique P. told investigators that all were aware that his wife had been drugged without her knowledge.
An expert said her state “was closer to a coma than to sleep”.
Her husband told prosecutors that only three men left the house quickly after arriving, while all others proceeded to have intercourse with his wife.
How police discovered alleged rape ring
Police began to investigate the defendant in September 2020 when he was caught by a security guard secretly filming under the skirts of three women in a shopping centre.
Police said they found hundreds of pictures and videos of his wife on his computer, visibly unconscious and mostly in the foetal position.
The images are alleged to show dozens of rapes in the couple’s home in Mazan.
Investigators also found chats on a site called coco.fr, since shut down by police, in which he recruited strangers to come to their home and have intercourse with his wife.
Dominique P., who appeared on the site under a pseudonym, has claimed he only “occasionally” logged on.
But several discussions were found in which he sometimes used the term “rape” and told potential attackers that administering sleeping pills to his wife allowed him to abuse her by engaging practices she would normally refuse.
Murder probe
Dominique P., who said he was raped by a male nurse when he was nine, was ready to face “his family and his wife”, his lawyer Beatrice Zavarro told AFP on Monday morning.
“He is ashamed of what he did, it’s unforgivable,” she said, adding the case was one of a “sort of addiction”.
This trial may not be his last.
He has also been charged with a 1991 murder and rape, which he denies, and an attempted rape in 1999, to which he admitted after DNA testing.
Experts said the man does not appear to be mentally ill, but in documents seen by AFP, they said he had a need to feel “all-powerful” over the female body.
The trial is to last until December 20
- With AFP
Wife rapist’s sick admission shocks France
The accused rapist at the centre of a criminal case that’s disgusted Europe has admitted to a horrific scheme involving his own wife.
Harrowing photo of Russian ‘sword execution’
Horrific images of an alleged execution with a sword on the Ukraine front line has sparked fury and a renewed investigation into war crimes. WARNING: Graphic
Grim reason mass rapes started: ‘Idle’
The husband accused of drugging his wife and inviting more than 80 men to have sex with her as revealed when his evil scheming began.