French woman testifies about decade-long drug-rape trauma

A French woman whose husband admitted he repeatedly drugged her over a 10-year period so she could be raped by dozens of strangers will testify on Thursday (September 5) in a mass trial of 51 alleged attackers.

Gisele P., now 72, remained calm and silent during the first three days of the high-profile case in southern Avignon, communicating through her lawyers.

However, she insisted that the hearing be held in public so that all the facts in the case could be known.

Stephane Babonneau, one of Gisele P.’s two lawyers, said she faces “an extremely difficult time” when giving evidence.

The first signs of the defense strategy emerged Wednesday when some attorneys asked investigators whether Gisele P. and her husband had an abusive relationship or whether it was credible that she went unnoticed throughout the decade of abuse.

Such questions clearly irritated the attentive plaintiff, who nevertheless continued the hearing as her three children left the courtroom in disgust.

“Of course she was offended,” said Antoine Camus, her other lawyer.

“She wanted to answer, we felt her jumping up and down behind us and saying, ‘I want to answer, I just have to answer,’ and we told her, ‘Tomorrow!’”

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Gisele P.’s husband, Dominique, is accused of abusing his wife between 2011 and 2020, giving her 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 accident when he was caught filming up women’s skirts in a local supermarket.

On Tuesday, he answered affirmatively when asked whether he was guilty of the charges brought against him.

The 71-year-old retiree documented her actions in painstaking detail on a hard drive in a folder titled “abuse”, which allowed French police to track down more than 50 men suspected of raping her while she was drugged.

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