Pallade Veneta - French woman says uncovering of mass rape trauma 'saved her life'

"The police saved my life by investigating Mister P.'s computer", Gisele P. told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband -- one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial.

Gisele P., now 71, had remained stoic and silent through the three first days of the high-profile case, communicating only through her lawyers.

But she revealed her emotion on the stand on Thursday when she recounted the moment in November 2020 when investigators first showed her the images of a decade of sexual abuse orchestrated and filmed by her husband Dominique P.

"My world is falling apart. For me, everything is falling apart. Everything I have built up over 50 years," Gisele P. said.

"Frankly, these are scenes of horror for me," she said of the pictures, while her husband listened with his head bowed.

"I'm lying motionless on the bed, being raped," added the woman of the "barbaric" footage.

"They treat me like a rag doll," she told a panel of five judges, adding that she had only plucked up the courage to watch the footage in May 2024.

"Don't talk to me about sex scenes. These are rape scenes," she said, stressing that she had never practised swinging or any other form of libertine sex.

Lawyers for some of the defendants questioned on Wednesday whether the couple had had a libertine relationship, or whether it was credible that Gisele P. had noticed nothing for the entire decade of the abuse.

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

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

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

Nevertheless, there will be "extremely difficult moments" for her as she testifies, said Stephane Babonneau, her other lawyer.

- Detailed records -

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 father of three documented his actions with meticulous precision on a hard drive with a folder labelled "abuse".

That enabled French police to track down more than 50 men suspected of raping Gisele P. while she was drugged.

A third of them were identified using facial recognition software, Bosse Platiere said.

The senior police chief for the Hautes-Alpes region said he had hand-picked investigators "who had the stomach" to face videos and images of abuse.

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

Eighteen of the 51 accused are in custody, including Dominique P.

Thirty-two other defendants are attending the trial as free men.

The last suspect, still at large, will be tried 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 have to live through the rapes to which she was subjected for 10 years", of which she has "no memory", he told AFP.

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F.Dodaro--PV