A husband who allegedly drugged his wife and invited more than 80 strangers to rape her at their home for almost a decade will go on trial on Monday in a case that has shocked France.
Fifty men accused of taking part in the abuse of the woman are also on trial at the court in Avignon.
Police say Dominique P crushed up sleeping tablets and anti-anxiety medication and mixed it into his wife’s evening meal or in her wine at their home in Mazan, near Carpentras in Provence. The father of three recruited men to rape and sexually abuse her from a online chatroom, where members fantasised about performing sexual acts on non-consenting partners.
The men were instructed to avoid smelling of any kind of fragrance or cigarette smoke to avoid alerting his wife and to leave if she moved so much as an arm, investigators said.
He was arrested on 2 November 2020, after a security guard caught him filming up the skirts of women in the local supermarket. Police found a file labelled “abuses” on a USB drive connected to his computer that contained 20,000 of images and films of his wife being raped almost 100 times.
Since his arrest he “always declared himself guilty”, his lawyer has said, adding that he had said: “I put her to sleep, I offered her, and I filmed.”
Health records reportedly show he obtained 450 sleeping pills in one year alone.
The 50 men on trial with him include a local councillor, nurses, a journalist, a former police officer, a prison guard, soldier, firefighter and civil servant, many of whom lived around Mazan, a town of about 6,000 inhabitants. The men were aged between 26 and 73 at the time of their arrests.
Several of the accused have denied the charges, telling police they had no idea the woman, whom Dominique P married in 1973, was not a willing partner and accused him of tricking them. Detectives were unable to identify and trace more than 30 other men who were recorded.
Investigators said the woman was devastated to learn of the abuse saying she had no recollection whatsoever of being raped. She had been drugged “almost to a state of coma”, investigators added.
“One morning she woke in a panic with a new haircut without understanding how this was possible. She went to her hairdresser who told her she had been in the previous day,” her lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said.
Babonneau said his client, now divorced, believed she had an illness nobody could explain and consulted several doctors, always accompanied by her husband, who blamed her symptoms on tiredness after looking after their grandchildren. Her three children and other relatives suspected she had Alzheimer’s disease.
Dominique P is also accused of the rape and murder of a 23-year-old estate agent in Paris in 1991. Sophie Narme was drugged, raped and stabbed in the chest. Another estate agent, aged 19, was attacked in similar circumstances but escaped after fighting back. Police have said DNA extracted from blood at the scene matched his profile.
The trial in Avignon is expected to last four months. Dominique P, 71, and the 50 other defendants face 20 years in prison if convicted of aggravated rape.