French woman says uncovering mass rape trauma saved her life

AVIGNON, France – A French woman whose husband admitted to hiring dozens of strangers to rape her while on drugs said at his trial Sept. 5 that police saved her by exposing the crimes.

“The police saved my life by examining Mr. P.’s computer,” Gisele P. said outside the court in the southern city of Avignon, naming her husband – one of 51 of her alleged tormentors in the trial – only by his last name.

Gisele P., now 71, gave free rein to her emotions in her nearly 90-minute testimony and described the moment in November 2020 when investigators first showed her the images of a decade of sexual abuse that had been staged and filmed by her husband Dominique P.

“My world is falling apart. Everything is falling apart for me. Everything I have built up in 50 years,” said Gisele P, pausing only occasionally to sip a glass of water.

As her daughter and two sons listened to the statement, she told police that her husband was a “great guy.” When she was first invited to an interview, she told them so.

At this meeting, Gisele P. was shown “barbaric” pictures of herself “lying motionless on the bed and being raped,” she recalled, while her husband listened with his head bowed.

“They treat me like a rag doll,” she told a five-member jury, adding that she did not muster the courage to watch the video footage until May 2024.

On September 4, lawyers for some of the defendants questioned whether the couple had had a permissive relationship and whether it was credible that Gisele P. had not noticed anything during the entire ten years of abuse.

“Don’t tell me about sex scenes. Those are rape scenes,” she said on September 5, stressing that she had never practiced swinging or any other form of libertine sex.

“Never complicity”

When asked by presiding judge Roger Arata, she reiterated that she was “never complicit” and never “pretended to sleep.”

Gisele P. insisted that the trial be held in public so that all the facts of the case come to light.

“I speak on behalf of all women who have been drugged without their knowledge, on behalf of all women who may never know… so that no woman in the future has to suffer the same thing,” she said.

Gisele P is in the process of divorcing her husband, who admitted on September 3 to drugging her with sleeping pills and then hiring dozens of strangers to rape her.

He was accidentally exposed when he was caught looking up women’s skirts at a local supermarket.

The husband “will explain again the reasons why he did this. He will explain himself and justify himself if there is any justification, because it is unforgivable,” his lawyer, Beatrice Zavarro, told AFPTV.

The 71-year-old father of three documented his actions with meticulous precision on a hard drive in a folder labeled “abuse,” lead investigator Jeremie Bosse Platiere said in court on September 4.

This enabled the French police to track down more than 50 men suspected of raping Gisele P while under the influence of drugs.

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

He said he handpicked investigators “who had the courage” to look into the videos and images of the abuse.

The police created a list of 72 people suspected of abusing Gisele P.

Investigators counted around 200 rapes, most of them by Dominique P., and over 90 by strangers who had registered via an adult website.